She counted calories like a calculator and walked for two and a half hours a day to burn them off.
The 37-year-old also self harmed – burning her arms so severely she ended up in hospital. She has always been a perfectionist and self-harming is no exception. She does it to the best of her ability.
Now, after the work of an organisation that she has been helped by was highlighted by the News & Star, she has spoken to encourage others in the same position as her to seek support.
Last January, her body reached breaking point and for the first time in her life, she thought she might die.
“I have always felt I’m indestructible. I have never thought that my anorexia will kill me,” she Sophie (not her real name). “I have always hated it. It has been my control. It gives me a buzz but I have never liked it.
“It’s destroyed my life. It’s stopped everything I love in my life – it stopped my sport, it stopped my friends. It’s put my life on hold for 23 years.”
The way Sophie’s anorexia started seems almost accidental.
When she was 15, everyone ordered chips at lunch on a school skiing trip and she didn’t. That chance decision sparked a mental condition she has struggled with all her life.
“I felt so good about not ordering them,” she says, “It was something I had control over.”
She says controlling food had nothing to do with her body image. It simply felt good.
She started eating copious amounts of vegetables and hiding food – sneaking it up her sleeves at meals, stuffing it into her socks or feeding the dog.
The weight soon began to drop off, which she liked because it was something else she could control. She began hiding her weight loss too by wearing lots of layers.
She says: “I couldn’t let my parents find out it was my control. I didn’t want anyone to intervene.”
But eventually her weight loss reached a point where she couldn’t hide it anymore. At school she was both clever and good at sports. So good, in fact, that she got through to county trials for hockey. However, in the run up to the trials she didn’t eat and when the day came around, she couldn’t play.
She was devastated but the set back only made her anorexia worse. In a few months, she could barely walk and was sent to an adolescent unit at a hospital in Dumfries, where she was ordered to take bed rest for eight weeks and eat between 3,500 and 4,000 calories a day.
Sophie had never been away from home before or experienced anything like the shared room at the adolescent unit she was shipped off to. She wasn’t allowed to see how much she weighed and to this day, she won’t let anybody else weigh her. She did put on weight though and when she was discharged, calories became her life.
“I tried to keep myself on an even keel but I still had issues with control,” she says.
At some point, Sophie started self-harming in other ways too by cutting and burning herself.
Advice and support
Self-harm Awareness for All Cumbria (SAFA): Trained counsellors at this charity in Carlisle offer one-to-one sessions. You can personally contact SAFA by phone, 01228 319711, or by email, . You can also be referred by your local GP, or anyone else who is involved in your case.
More information and self referral forms can be found at
Cumbria Partnership NHS Foundation Trust: You can talk to your GP about your eating disorder and they can put you in contact with community mental health services. Those diagnosed with severe anorexia, with a body mass index of 13 or below or 15 which is decreasing despite standard interventions, can be referred to the Anorexia Nervosa Service (ANIS).
ANIS is made up of a small team who work intensively with adults. They offer specialist dietitian input to help people develop a healthier relationship with food and meal planning. The service also offers therapy tailored to individual needs and where appropriate to family’s needs as well.
Beat is the UK's leading charity supporting anyone affected by eating disorders or difficulties with food, weight and shape. Beat has adult helplines,0345 634 1414 or email , and youthlines, 0345 634 7650 or email .
Anorexia Bulimia Care (ABC) has provided personal care and support nationally for anyone affected by eating disorders for over 25 years. Local ABC counsellors can be found in Carlisle and Whitehaven by visiting:
Both her anorexia and self-harm have fluctuated throughout her life and although she says she can cope with one at once, she cannot handle the two together.
Friends and family tried to talk to her about it but she has struggled to open up to them.
“People tried but I didn’t want to let anybody in,” she says. “It was my control method and it made me feel good and I felt people had control of everywhere – especially of my life: pressure from parents, pressure from school and it was just like this is what I can do.”
Over the years she has sought medical help from psychologists, dieticians and doctors but says although some of them have been great, they have only ever seen her as an anorexic – as a behaviour rather than a person.
Sophie is disappointed with the help available in Cumbria, where she believes NHS support services in the county need to improve.
Sophie has been sent out of the county to Dumfries, York, Leeds, Manchester, London and Stroud for specialised treatment not available in Cumbria but she doesn’t think it has helped her get better.
“I don’t think it helps sending people out of county because you can’t get better if you’re not in your own environment.
“To me, help in the community is more important because that’s your life, that’s the pressures, that’s what makes you ill in the first place.”
Anorexia has stopped Sophie having the life she thought she would. She cannot remember large parts of her life because self-harming has removed her from reality.
She describes it as a sort of detachment – she was numb and dissociated from herself.
Last year was particularly turbulent for her: in January she nearly died and had to have food put straight into her stomach.
She says: “I begged for it because I didn’t know how to stop it. I have never felt that scared of dying with anorexia. I always thought my body would survive it but that time I decided I probably wasn’t going to.”
Survive she did and when she was recovering, she came to the realisation that the only way she would be able to get better was by confronting the underlying reasons of why her anorexia had started in the first place. She knew that the only way to heal was to start seeing value in herself and loving herself.
“I decided I had to do something. I couldn’t let it defeat me,” she says.
Her community mental health team suggested she should contact a support worker at Self Harm Awareness for All (SAFA) in Carlisle.
Helene Wickins It was there that she met counsellor Helene Wickins, who she described as her lifeline.
Although SAFA had no spaces available, Helene said she would keep in touch with Sophie until there was.
In June her self-harm and anorexia both went into steep decline. She was eating and making herself sick and at one point burnt herself so badly, she had to go to hospital in Newcastle for six weeks. She is still wearing bandages now from where she severed her tendons, deliberately.
When she came out of hospital she decided the self-harming had to stop.
“It would either kill me or I had to try the really hard thing that I’d never done before and face all the things I’d never faced up to before, which is the feeling and emotions.”
Helene offered Sophie a different kind of treatment – instead of focusing on her behaviour, she asked about the underlying issues. Sophie says Helene listens, doesn’t judge, takes everything into consideration and understands.
Sophie says: “I have never had anyone who gets it the way she does. She saw me as a whole person. She didn’t see one illness.
“She holds onto my hope when my hope despairs.”
For the first time, Sophie felt like someone had put faith in her, someone believed she could get better.
This hope and belief has been crucial. In the last week, a leading psychiatrist in the field of eating disorders said there was unlikely to be any medication, therapy or treatment that will improve or cure Sophie’s mental health difficulties.
This conclusion angered Sophie because she has greatly improved with Helene’s help.
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What is anorexia? (from )
It is a serious mental health condition. It's an eating disorder where a person keeps their body weight as low as possible. They usually do this by restricting the amount of food they eat, making themselves vomit and exercising excessively.
The condition often develops out of an anxiety about body shape and weight that originates from a fear of being fat or a desire to be thin. It most commonly affects girls and women, although it has become more common in boys and men in recent years. On average, the condition first develops at around the age of 16-17.
She hasn’t self-harmed in six months – the longest she has ever gone – she hasn’t weighed herself since last May and she is no longer counting calories on most food.
She says: “To not know what [my weight] is and to know it has gone up and is going up – really that’s one of my controls gone. It’s on its own and it’s scary. I never thought I’d get the rigid control of eating calories out of my head. That had been almost my dream.”
Anorexia numbed Sophie’s emotional pain and separated her from reality. She says she used it to stop her memories, to stop herself facing up to who she was.
She says: “I have always known why my behaviour started but I have never been able to admit it to anybody.
“I knew it would be the hardest battle of my life and it is. Facing my fears and feeling and emotions, I know that was going to hurt. It hurts more than any pain I have ever inflicted on myself.”
She is still very much on the road to recovery but is determined to keep improving.
She advises others who are also suffering from eating disorders to seek whatever help they can and to keep persevering until you do find support. If your GP won’t help, find another one and find people to talk to.
She says: “It’s not a sign of weakness to ask for help – to me it’s a sign of strength.
“No-one can rescue you. You have to rescue yourself.”
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