It's More Than Just Eating!

It has possibly been the most stressful week so far this semester… possibly even this year! I feel more stressed out than I was during exam period because well… law school is horrendous when you have about 200 pages of compulsory reading to get through. Swimming in my readings for the past week have meant I was unable to post on my blog! I also went to a friend’s birthday party last Friday (12-02-2016) which meant my night was taken up by horrendous pop songs and Punjabi MC playing in the most loved student club in the city.

I had a sort of writers block moment when I tried to decide what I was going to write about so I took to social media and conjured up an idea for today’s post. My topic of choice is eating disorders (again it’s not the most delightful of topics) but I’m hoping that I can raise a little bit of awareness here and enlighten people on the real truths behind eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia.

I’m sure that most people are aware of the common features of eating disorders. Anorexia is commonly associated with people who don’t eat whilst bulimia is associated with those who eat to throw up. I reluctantly label these issues as ‘eating disorders’ because in my opinion, it is less an issue of eating and more an issue of mental processes and thinking. Having known people that have experienced eating disorders, I began to understand the home truths behind them. Furthermore, I reluctantly divulge my own issues here; I have, myself, fought through anorexia myself.

It is only recently that I have spoken about my own issues, purely because I hate addressing it. When I look back, I realise how much of a dark place I was in. Whilst I was never medically diagnosed with anorexia, I know now, my relationship with food was not healthy. I explicitly remember one day when all I ate was a bag of candyfloss and a few spoon-fulls of stir fry. I remember when my friends told me I should bring lunch to school and my form tutor writing a letter home telling my mum he was worried because my friends told him I don’t eat. For me, it felt good to be hungry, the pain was worth the flat stomach and the skinny legs. I used to count my calories and limit my intake. I realise now how much it affected my life, I was physically and mentally unstable. I hated myself if I ate more than one bag of crisps a week and I would constantly look for ways to hide the fact that I didn’t eat. Luckily for me, I realised I was damaging my health and started not to care so much about it. However, like I said, these ‘eating disorders’ as we so classify them, are a mentally exhausting battle. I wasn’t worried about what was healthy, I was worried about how much I was eating. I was worried about how I looked, everyday I would look in the mirror and think my stomach was sticking out too much. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that I love my body now, but I am comfortable. I no longer feel the need to point out how skinny my legs look, I don’t seek reassurance about my weight anymore, I have coping mechanisms. I eat more, I eat healthy.

When I first started university, all of my flatmates would point out how all I eat is soup and toast and my parents would keep telling me I’m losing weight. This was the point at which I started to address my issues. I began to feel ashamed of what I looked like, ashamed of how people would tell me I look like I’m going to snap. It almost went from one extreme to another and (again, I am reluctant in divulging this information) having a controlling boyfriend who actively forced me to eat, made me feel worse. During college, whenever I went to his house, he would make me eat food, even if I didn’t want to. I had just started getting a hold on my issues (which he was not aware of) and then I slipped back into them because I started to resent the fact that he would make me eat. I started out appreciating the care he showed but when all I could think about was putting on weight, I hated it. I hated eating, I would make excuses but he would never accept them, that’s when I started lying about how much I had eaten. It sparked my unhealthy relationship with food again because I convinced myself I had eaten and that I wasn’t hungry.

This is why eating disorders are so much more than eating disorders. Often, I see people saying ‘oh for goodness sake I don’t understand why they don’t just eat!’ when they talk of people being anorexic. Most of society fails to acknowledge the fact that anorexia is a mental battle. On the NHS choices page, the first line in explaining anorexia is that it is a ‘serious mental health condition’ and I honestly wish more people would come to appreciate that. It’s highly unlikely that anyone would count their calories and restrict their intake unless there is some underlying issue or purpose.

People with eating disorders are not attention seekers. People with eating disorders are not stupid. People with eating disorders don’t need food shoved in their faces. People with eating disorders need support, they need care, they need people to listen to them, to tell them that they are beautiful, to show them what is healthy. I strongly believe that a lot of the media fuels eating disorders too, because we are trying to achieve what we see, and we don’t realise that more often than not, it is impossible to achieve the photoshopped image we see.

There are so many people in the world that suffer from an eating disorder, and they suffer in silence. We often hear of cases where girls are taken into hospital because of anorexia but how often do you hear of boys being admitted with an eating disorder? It does happen, and we need to stop stigmatising anyone, especially boys, with eating disorders. I hate how society labels the same thing in a different gender. Why can’t boys have eating disorders? At the end of the day, it’s a faulty cognitive process, it doesn’t make someone weak or less manly or a girl if they have an eating disorder. So what if society says boys should have muscles and able to eat tonnes of food? You don’t need to be ashamed by the fact that you find it difficult to conform. Don’t be ashamed to admit you have an unhealthy relationship with food, don’t be ashamed to take the help being offered to you.

Whilst I was in school, a girl was teased for being overweight. She soon left school and when she returned, she returned anorexic. She was hit in the worst way with an eating disorder and what caused it? It was the society we live in. She was told being overweight was wrong and she was accepted into social groups again when she came back skinny. Following that, she was shunned for being too skinny. How can we let this continue in society? I appreciate the sensitivity of eating disorders as a topic to talk about but that doesn’t mean we should ignore it. We need to treat eating disorders with the same caution we treat other mental health issues such as depression. Whilst I don’t agree with immediate medication, I believe in therapy, counselling, talking, getting to the root of the issue, finding out why people are the way they are. What thought process do they follow? When you think about food what crosses your mind?

I understand that there will be no overnight miracle. We won’t wake up tomorrow to a world full of perfect people, where there are no eating disorders and where everyone is informed on what an eating disorder is, but we can definitely make a change. We can change the labels society puts on everything. Stop stigmatising people and making them feel like a social outcast because they don’t have a good relationship with food. We need to start looking beyond the physical symptoms of eating disorders to the emotional issues associated with it. Sometimes, people don’t even realise they have an eating disorder, they don’t wake up one day and think ‘oh I will be anorexic from today’ it’s often a long term, developing issue. It might start with a diet, then turn to a severe diet or bouts of severe dieting. There are so many signs to look out for.

To anyone with an eating disorder, I want you to actively seek out whatever help you need to overcome it. No matter what size or shape you are, you are, and always will be, beautiful. Just remember that a healthy you is a better you!

To anyone living with someone with an eating disorder, I want you to support that person. Be with them every step of the way, through the disorder and their recovery and even after that. Relapse is a possibility. Don’t give up on them, it might be hard but it WILL be worth it!

To anyone that has overcome an eating disorder WELL DONE! I am glad you found the support you needed and I hope that now, you are happy with where you are. I hope that you continue to be happy and keep getting whatever help you need.

Never be afraid to ask for help, EVER! No matter what you are going through, there will always be someone to help you.

If you’re in the UK and want to talk to someone about eating disorders, you can find contact details for Beat online at https://www.b-eat.co.uk/support-services/helpline

If you’re in the US and want to talk to someone about eating disorders, you can find contact details for Canopy Cove at http://www.canopycove.com/eating-disorder-treatment-center.php?keyword=getting%20%2Bhelp%20for%20%2Beating%20%2Bdisorders&gclid=CMKy3aDvgcsCFYIW0wodUMAITw

Alternatively, if anyone ever wants to talk to me, feel free to comment or email me. I am always here. Keep smiling.

All love xoxo

Blah Bleugh Blog!

I have a full 3 days until my first exam. Intellectual Property. I don't even know what time my exam is yet... I should probably check that. Nevertheless, revision is in full swing (I say as I blog and watch a movie at the same time). But no, seriously, after this post I will be focussing.. at least trying to anyway!

So today I want to talk about hate and bullying. I know it's not the most cheerful of topics but its something that I have always known of and been aware of. I'll start with my story first...

When I was in primary school (year 3-6) I had quite a big group of friends but I soon started to notice I had probably chosen the wrong people to be friends with. I always got on with the boys, and to this day I get on better with boys than most girls. I think it comes down to judgement. As typical girls, me and my friends were always falling out and it would usually be me left on my own, so I used to go and play football with the boys. It was fine, I suppose thats what kids do however it got to a point where it was literally every day that my friends would be picking arguments with me. That was when I knew something was up so I decided to find a new group of friends. As soon as I got comfortable in my new group of friends, my old friends would come and try and take me back. Me being me, I went back to them and found myself caught in a weird cycle.

Then came the time for secondary school... I was so excited. New prospects, new opportunities and of course a new school bag. It was a great start, I made new friends, kept some old friends and the best part about it was that my brother was also at the school so I knew that if I needed anything I could go to him. However, secondary school was also where I got bullied. It wasn't to the extent that I needed to get teachers involved or tell my parents but it definitely was not a nice situation for me to be in. I got teased about my bushy eyebrows and my unfortunate facial hair (which I have no shame in admitting I have now). The sad thing was, I was bullied by girls in the higher years, they'd make comments about me and laugh as I walked past them. Honestly it was horrible. It didn't stop there though. In year 8/9 I remember learning about magnetic forces in science... I was never good at science so found the concept quite confusing. I went over to the teacher to ask about it and one horrible horrible boy made a nasty comment to me about how I should be able to understand this because I obviously use a razor for my moustache! It absolutely destroyed me. I had never ever felt so hurt. For someone to make a comment like that to me was just so so SO mean! I just remember running away and crying. I sat at my desk and wept. My friends started asking me what had happened so I told them and they called one of the teaching assistants over. She started asking me questions and all I remember doing is shouting at her, telling her she didn't understand because she obviously didn't go through what I go through. I look back now and think how silly it was to let it get to me but I do understand how it did affect me so much. I went home to my mum that day and cried about these nasty boys in my science class.

Being brought up as a muslim meant that I went to school in the evenings (madressa) to learn about Islam. It was never something I enjoyed because I was always tired after school but what made it even worse was the bullies. Again I had people (girls) teasing me about the way I looked. Making comments, laughing at me, kicking me, I was even pushed down the stairs. It made the whole experience so much worse for me. It made me conscious of my appearance, I felt worthless, I hated how I looked. I soon left that madressa and started at a new one, where I began to experience the same issues. I was picked on by the girls in my class and I remember trying to tell my teacher that my mum wanted to talk with her, but all she did was tell me she's too busy. This really upset me and I remember running out of my class crying and going straight to my cousins house (just across the road). It was a horrible moment and not too long after, I left that madressa too and never went back to madressa again.

I moved on with my life a lot and by the time I reached year 10, I was happy with myself, how I looked. The people around me grew up and so did I. I learnt that people's opinions of me don't matter and hold no significance. I began to surround myself with better people, more positive people who I knew I could count on. Those are the friends I still talk to today.

I've been through two years of college and am now in my final year of university. I look back to when I was in college and remember one particular girl, who had picked on me and bullied me in madressa,  yet in college, she wanted to be friends with me, just because of the people I spoke to. She would always talk to me and be friendly with me. Now of course, I wasn't going to ignore her because that would make me as bad as she was all those years ago, but it amazes me that people seem to forget what they've put you through. I absolutely hate bullying, and I don't imagine there is anyone out there that does, but its the fact that, a lot of the time, people don't realise how much their actions are hurting someone else.

When I was in school, there was always one group of girls that picked on a girl in my form class and you could see the sadness in her eyes when they done it, even though she put on a front to show she didn't care. Sometimes, bullies don't realise that what they are doing is bullying, they put it down to a joke because they think the other person doesn't care. No one can honestly sit there and say that when someone makes little jokes about their appearance or constantly picks on something they've done or the way they talk or walk, that it doesn't bother them. If you do that to someone, even if its a close friend, you have to make sure you're careful about how you're doing it. Everyone has feelings, you can't forget that, and sometimes, emotional pain is the worst kind of pain.

My story on bullying came out with a positive ending, but it wasn't easy getting here. I have been through a lot to make me the person I am today. Those girls that picked on me destroyed every ounce of self confidence I had and even when I was in college, I went through some real rough times (maybe I will talk about these in another blog) but it wasn't easy. Bullying has such an effect on your mind that it becomes so hard to shift. I'm sure many people have read the stories about children, sometimes as young as 11, committing suicide because of bullying. That's the sick truth of the world. There are people that can drive young innocent children to killing themselves. There is no justification for that.

So, next time you think about making a joke about someones appearance, unless you honestly know that person will not be affected, think twice about it. You never know what goes on behind closed doors, even some of your closest friends might not tell you how things make them feel inside.

I've moved on a lot with my life now, I know how to take comments from people and I know how to ignore the worthless comments people have made about me and even to my face. There have been instances where family members have said things to me, without thinking twice about it and it has hurt me. But now, I've reached a stage where I take those comments with a pinch of salt, because honestly, they mean nothing.

To anyone who has/is being bullied, all I say is stay strong. Rise above it and conquer them. You are, and always will be a better person than whoever is bullying you

. Surround yourself with people that embrace you, make yourself feel better, because honestly, the only person who knows what you're going through emotionally is you, no one understand you better than you do. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't talk to people because opening up to others allows you to build your own army. Fight the negativity with positivity, close your ears and mind to the bullies, even if that is with the help of others.

One last thing I have to say is that bullies come in all shapes, sizes and ages. There's no 'look' for a bully. You can be 50 years old and still be a bully, it isn't just a playground thing. Never be ashamed to admit you've been emotionally hurt because emotions are nothing to be afraid of. The world is opening its ears and eyes to all types of issues, there is ALWAYS someone who will listen to you!

Feel free to comment or get in touch on any of the issues!!


All love xoxo

P.S. Sorry if there was a lot of waffle.. I wanted to get out my thoughts and so I didn't edit!