My Anorexia Journey: What I Have Learned a Year After Diagnosis

One year ago today, at the age of 23, I was diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa, an eating disorder with the highest mortality rate of any mental illness.

My eating disorder story is not your typical one. I never struggled with food as a teenager, but after becoming unwell with OCD and psychosis in April 2025, controlling my food and focusing on my weight became the only way I felt I could cope with the trauma of what I’d been through and the overwhelm and uncertainty of life. Eating disorders can affect anyone, regardless of age, gender or background.

One year ago, I was deteriorating rapidly, becoming more unwell each day. My entire life revolved around how many calories I could burn and how little I could eat. I couldn’t focus on the things I loved – reading, writing, or spending time with friends or family.

My parents said it was as though they’d lost their daughter, my friends had lost a friend and my siblings had lost a sister.

I was completely consumed by anorexia.

Between October and January, I weight restored. Then OCD and psychosis took over again. But over this past year, I have learned more than I ever thought possible.

I learned that the thoughts calling for me to destroy myself were not my thoughts at all, that they belonged to my illness not to me and the more I starved them of attention, the quieter they became.

I learned that spending my life at war with my body, following rules that suffocated me and denying myself permission to rest was no way to live at all.

I learned that permission to recover would never magically arrive, that there is no trophy for suffering and no badge of honour for being unwell. Anorexia would constantly shift its goal posts until it had destroyed me, and if I wanted my life back I would have to choose to fight for myself over and over again, every single day.

I tried my hardest to focus on the future version of myself that I desperately wanted to become, and that version of me had nothing to do with my illnesses.

I learned that my mind would never be free from obsessive thoughts about food and weight, until my body felt safe again. My brain would never be silent until I ate. And that meant eating a lot of food. More food than I ever thought would be needed.

I learned that both options were hard – staying unwell and living in Hell every day, and fighting to recover, but only one of those paths would be temporary. Only one led to hope.

And hope is what I clung to. And still cling to.

Hope that I was choosing to live.

Hope that there was another way to cope.

Hope that I could feel joy again, experience emotions again, and stop spending every day trying to numb my pain.

It has been one of, if not the hardest, year of my life. And it’s still hard. I still have to choose recovery every single day.

But my parents have their daughter back, my friends have their friend back, and my siblings have their sister back. And more importantly, I have glimmers of myself back. I am no longer stuck where I was. I am moving forwards, towards a life that I choose to believe I deserve.  

Recovery is possible. It is terrifying, exhausting, messy and not linear, but it is possible.

Choose hope and keep choosing hope.

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