I batt a sec eatin disor for 14
WITH a high-flying career as a TV producer, on the surface it looked as if Caroline Jones had a charmed life. At work she had a reputation for being unflappable and was liked and respected by her peers. With friends she appeared happy and full of life.
Yet unbeknown to everyone, for 14 years Caroline had been in the grip of an eating disorder so severe it drove her to steal and lie in order to keep it a secret.
Caroline first started suffering from bulimia when she was 17 and it quickly progressed until she was bingeing multiple times a week, sneaking out to buy bags of chocolate bars and cream cakes before gorging herself and making herself sick.
“It was all-consuming and dominated my thoughts and behaviour,” says Caroline, now 41.
Caroline, who lives in Brighton with her musician husband Mikey, 46, and their children, George, seven, and Polly, four, admits that during her illness relationships were hard to sustain.
“Eating disorders suck the joy out of everything. I had no self-esteem. I was so preoccupied that it was hard to genuinely love and care for somebody else,” she says.
“No relationship I had was really healthy because I had this secret and constantly pulled away from people.”
Caroline felt so ashamed that it took more than decade to come clean about her bulimia.
“I thought I could deal with it on my own. I was lonely and felt so guilty. I knew what I was doing was wrong,” she says.
Caroline’s problems with food began when she was a teenager.
She was born in Ethiopia and by the time she was 18 she had lived in six countries. Her parents worked for the Red Cross and moved regularly because of their jobs.
“I had an incredible childhood in beautiful countries. My parents were open-minded and adventurous and we were encouraged to explore the deserts and mountains,” she says.
“But in my teens, I began to feel very dislocated.”
Aged 17, Caroline was enrolled in a Kent boarding school. Living in England for the first time, she says she felt “like a fish out of water” and started comfort eating. When worries about her weight crept in, Caroline would binge on toast, crisps and chocolate only to make herself sick afterwards.
Two years later, while studying modern languages at Oxford University, she was bingeing up to three times a week.
“I felt intense self-loathing. I was ashamed of my appearance,” she says. “So I would go to the shops, buy a large chocolate bar, eat it all and bring it back up.”
When she was 21, Caroline was arrested in Oxford for shoplifting junk food. “That was my first ‘rock bottom’ moment. As I sat in a police cell, my mind was blown by how I had managed to get myself into this mess,” she says.
CAROLINE was released by police with a formal caution but she was so shocked by her actions that she came clean to her family.
However, while they offered love, support and a place to stay, Caroline says it didn’t help and her eating disorder continued to get worse. “By this point my parents had moved to