No one spotted my eating disorder because I was a boy
The You Are What You Wear star tells ELIZABETH ARCHER how his relationship with food blighted his adolescence
WHEN Darren Kennedy looks back on his teenage years, the memories are wrought with pain. Struggling with being gay at an Irish Catholic all boys school, he developed an eating disorder which took over two years of his life.
“Emotionally, it was probably the most difficult time in my life,” says Darren, 39.
Now he is keen to speak about his struggles.
“As I’ve matured I’m more at ease discussing these things. It pains me to think of young people now going through what I went through.
“People assume men are fine. No one noticed I was losing weight because I was a boy and boys are fine. They don’t suffer with issues with their body.
“We’ve a long way to go until we recognise that men struggle too. Men often don’t feel they have places to discuss these topics.”
During his early childhood, Darren had a healthy relationship with food. “I’m the middle of three children and in a good old Irish family you have to sit down and eat together and polish off the plate.
“No food could be left – food waste wasn’t allowed. I loved my food and was encouraged to eat.”
BUT when he was a teenager, a family member made a comment about his appetite. “Once when I was 14 or
15, at a relative’s house, someone made a comment about how much I ate.
“My uncle replied: ‘It’s all fun and games now, but wait until you hit 18 and it’ll catch up with you.’
“I didn’t say anything, but it lived with me.”
Then, around the same time, someone at school remarked on Darren’s weight.
“An older student made a comment about my size.
I was probably chubby but I was never obese. It triggered something in me and compounded what my uncle had said.”
Darren began to restrict what he was eating. “All I lived on was cereal and sandwiches and the weight dropped off me.”
His parents didn’t notice his restrictive diet. “Because I’d never had an issue with eating, my parents were never concerned, so they didn’t monitor what I ate. They would have with my sister, because she never had a good appetite.”
Darren would lie about what he’d eaten to avoid family mealtimes. “I’d be out all day and my mum would be like: ‘What do you want for dinner?’ and I’d say: ‘Oh I had food when I was out.’”
He lost weight rapidly and friends began to notice. “People made comments and I loved it. It fuelled me with positive encouragement, although people didn’t realise that’s what they were doing.”
Darren became obsessed with his appearance. “I discovered stretch marks on my legs which I realise now were probably from growth spurts, but I thought were scars from being chubby.
“Every time I ate I was obsessed with seeing if my stomach was bloated, and I thought I had a fat face. Eating would send me into a guilt spiral. It became a vicious circle.”
Looking back, Darren can see how unhappy he was. “I was coming out to myself, coming to terms with my sexuality. I was struggling with my identity, and was fearful of being discovered for being gay.”
Although Darren’s parents aren’t religious, he went to a strict Catholic school.
“I went to a Christian Brothers all boys school where if you played Gaelic football you were kind of on a pedestal – and I didn’t.
“I stood out for all the wrong reasons and got bullied. I had periods of feeling very isolated.”
Eventually, he came out to his friends and family and was relieved to be accepted. “I started coming out when I was around 16, to my closest friends who were girls.And then I came out to my brother first and my sister shortly afterwards.
“My brother said: ‘Don’t tell mum and dad’. So I held off and told them when I was 18.”
By then the eating disorder’s grip on his life had begun to loosen. But while he was no longer living on sandwiches and cereal, food still occupied his thoughts.
“If I wasn’t eating food, then
I was thinking about food and what I was going to eat next.”
In his mid-20s, Darren worked as a reporter and producer on an Irish programme about food.
“We had a dietitian and I worked with her, creating videos and meal plans. I learnt a lot about food and how to eat healthily.”
His focus shifted from restricting his diet to nourishing his body.
“I think about food a lot but what I eat has changed. I understand what my body needs and have a good relationship with food.
“If you listen to your body you learn what works for you, it’s incredibly freeing. Now I can pretty much eat what I want when I want. It allows for the fluctuations when you want cake or ice cream.”
His experience makes him proud to be a presenter on new BBC show You Are What You Wear, alongside Rylan Clark-Neal.
The programme encourages men and women of all shapes and sizes to love the way they look.
“It’s all about feeling good from the outside in. Most people who put themselves forward for a makeover, have already made a huge journey and a huge psychological shift.
“Most of them have lost their identity and have done everything in their power to avoid a mirror.
“We want to give them the best chance to shift the trajectory of their lives. It’s very much about making the most of what you have.”
As Darren talks from his Dublin home, it is five years since Ireland voted to legalise gay marriage.
He is emotional, thinking about what he went through as a teenager.
“When the vote came in to Dublin Castle, it was euphoric in a way I never thought it would be.”
You Are What You Wear is on Thursdays 8pm BBC One.