SWEDA Somerset & Wessex Eating Disorders Association 18-25 Project

"Why Eating Disorders
Are not cool"

"Serving those affected by Eating Disorders"

• Eating disorders are not cool. You will not make friends, you will lose your ability to keep the ones you already have.
• Being fat does not excuse eating disordered behaviour. If it’s disordered it’s disordered, despite your weight.
• Anorexia and bulimia are not diets. They are not easy. They only serves to make your life living hell.
• Anorexia does not equal beauty.
• Once you start it is near on impossible to stop. You are not an exception to this rule
• There are better ways to express your emotions. If you’re sad cry. If you’re angry scream at the roof top. Your voice communicates your emotions much better than your body ever will.
• Eating healthy and moderately exercising will make you much more attractive than rotten and missing teeth, frail bones, grey complexion and a face of doom ever will.
• Sticking your head down the toilet never becomes a pleasant experiences. It is simply not worth it
• If you want to fit in—go make some friends. Ana is not one of them!
• Mary-Kate looks like a monkey
• Depression is a pit and not cool
• This is not a good way to go about getting attention
• If you have problems, there si no shame in talking about them, there is no shame in asking for help. It shows a much stronger person to speak up than it does to keep quiet and become subsequently ill.
• An eating disorder affects everyone around you in a bad way
• Everyone deserves to be heard, even yourself.

(Stardust)

“The major thing I would have liked to have known was that there’s no shame in asking for help, no matter how big or how small my problems seemed , that I did not have to wait until I felt suitably ill enough to warrant some help”

Get help now and use it well, don't waste as many years of your life as I did.”

These are people's experiences and some of the reasons people see how there eating disordered behaviour developed and wishes they have that they had been able to speak to someone and work out these beliefs and myths sooner!

• I thought it would make my life ok
• I just could not be bothered with food
• When no one listened food was my comfort
• I saw a programme of a bulimic and thought that I could eat and be thing
• I just wanted to be thin
• I wanted to be like everyone else
• I wanted to wear nice clothes and be part of the cool crowd, I was so alone
• I thought I had too much , if I did not eat someone somewhere who was starving would be fed
• I hated my body changing
• I did not think there was anything wrong, why did they all make so much fuss.
• If only I could see how it stole my childhood and adolescence and adulthood for so many years
• I could not concentrate on anything well enough except the perfection of starving
• It did not make me happy
• I only went on a diet, then could not stop and I got trapped in a dark cage.
• I just let everyone think I was happy I worked hard and said I ate late at night or on my own just salad, noone saw me vomit, noone cared or so I thought!
• I thought my family loved other people who they paid attention to  and helped and not me
• It was like my friend until it became my enemy who filled up my life and would not leave me.
• It was suffocating me.
• My teacher was the one who noticed and took me to the doctors.
• My youth worker rang people to try and get help I did not want it I would not let them tell anyone I wish I had it would have saved years of pain and sadness.

"I wish I had been able to talk to people not to express my feelings through my body and food be that eating tonnes or nothing at all. It is not a solution but created for me long term pain and is one hell of a tricky road back into an integrated life so don't go there talk it is not cool to have an ed-honest!"

If only I had had help when I had been leaving home and going to University
If only I had been able to realise that things were not ok
If only someone had been there to help me see it was not all about weight and food
If only I had been able to ask for help
Would I have been ill for so long?
Did I deserve to be?
Would I have been able to enjoy Uni?
Would I have been able to concentrate more
Would I have had friends
Would I have smiled inside out?
Would I have been able to seek help
I wonder how things would have been would I have had a friend?
It is too late now to think of that, I have to live my life now

For 18-25 more information contact



www.swedauk.org
Or email lyn@swedauk.org