Ben idolised men in fitness magazines

Beverley MattoCks, 59, lives in West yorkshire with her husband, Paul, 53, and is the author of two books: Please eat and When anorexia Came to visit. their son, Ben, is now 25. Beverley says: ANOREXIA crept into our lives the year Ben turned 15.

In July we went on holiday to France and realised he was doing an awful lot of exercise, swimming up and down the pool every day and going for runs as well as refusing to eat ‘holiday foods’ such as ice cream, biscuits and bread.

Overnight, it seemed his role models became the Adonis-style men you get in men’s fitness magazines. And yet, the more he stared at them, the more he became the very opposite: skinny, tired and robbed of his confidence, self-esteem and sense of fun.

He even lost his much sought-after ‘six pack’ as the anorexia began to eat away at the muscles in his body.

In October, the school nurse told me she and the PE staff were concerned about him, and, after being told several times by our GP to wait and see what happened, I finally got a referral to the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.

At the end of January, Ben’s pulse plummeted to 29 beats per minute as his heart muscle was being eaten away by his starving body. I insisted he was seen more urgently.

After nearly two years of psychiatric treatment, we have managed to turn things around. Recovery was a slow process. But now, aged 25, Ben has a first-class honours degree and an MA in history and he works for a digital marketing agency as a copywriter.

I am even more proud of his achievements, knowing what he had to do to get there.