00:00So it's Eating Disorder Awareness Week and I never quite know what to say and I certainly
00:07haven't pre-planned what I'm going to say now but saying something I think is imperative because
00:14undoubtedly there's going to be a lot of people, a lot of women but also men watching this now
00:19who are just going through it and I think the first thing to note is that often when you're in
00:28the trenches and you're going through it you don't know, not everybody knows. When I was
00:33dealing with bulimia in my late teens and sporadically throughout my 20s but quite
00:40dramatically in my early 20s I didn't know I had an eating disorder, I didn't know that's what it was,
00:47it was just something that I did in secret and I didn't want anyone to know about it and I
00:53certainly
00:54didn't see it as a problem because that's where my mind had gone to, that was the sort of the
01:00levels
01:00of the eating disorder that I was dealing with and it wasn't really until my late 20s I thought I've
01:06got to do something about this because this is, I know this is not good and it's not doing me
01:12any
01:13good mentally or physically and I went about it in my own way and I don't think there's be any
01:20pressure
01:20for anyone to do it in any one way but I would say over the years therapy has helped me
01:25a lot,
01:28a hell of a lot and hearing other people's stories about it and knowing that it you know it's not
01:33something to be ashamed of, it's certainly not something that needs to remain secret. I couldn't
01:37say the word bulimia for years, I didn't identify with it, I couldn't say it and I was sort of
01:46mortified about all of it and now I feel very comfortable talking about it and probably just
01:52through practice feel like it's important to talk about it because lots of people will be dealing
01:56with it now and also when you're in it you feel like it's impossible to break that cycle whether
02:01it's bulimia or anorexia or any other version of an eating disorder but it's not impossible and
02:08you can heal and you can recover and I've heard some incredible stories about other people that have
02:13B are doing some amazing work, they've got a new campaign going at the moment. I would say if
02:17you're really struggling that's a very good place to start whether you head to their Instagram or
02:22their website and know you're not alone in it. I know that's such a flippant thing to say but you're
02:30not. There's many other people out there going through it who understand, who get it or have been
02:36through it and you can recover, you can heal. I think it's so important to know that it's possible
02:43and my god if you're a parent going through this with a kid, you know I obviously put my parents
02:48through a really shocking time during my eating disorder, then my heart goes out to you.
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