How divorce is triggering eating disorders in middle aged women
It’s an illness usually suffered by young girls. But Kim’s story reveals
At first glance the emails looked harmless enough — but it wasn’t an innocent online chat that i’d stumbled upon as i helped my four-year-old search for the CBeebies website on the family computer.
these were love letters from my husband to his mistress. He moved out soon afterwards and i was left to pick up the pieces of my shattered life.
And there was an added consequence of his betrayal; it kickstarted an eating disorder that took me six years to recover from. At my thinnest i could fit into my youngest daughter’s trousers. Worse, i didn’t see anything shocking about that.
these days, mothers are very watchful of their teenagers when it comes to food. My girls are now aged 15 and 17 and, even if i hadn’t been through anorexia myself, i’d be alert to signs of an eating disorder.
i was 30 when i got ill and it was my first experience of anorexia and bulimia. in fact, research by University College London last year suggests food issues may be more prevalent among middle-aged women than younger generations. they estimate three per cent of women in their 40s and 50s have had a problem with eating within the past year. for those aged 15-30 the rate is about one per cent.
the UCL research looked at upbringing to explain later-life eating disorders. But from my experience, and talking to women in recovery as part of my job as a complementary therapist, although childhood experiences contribute to eating disorders, it’s major life changes like divorce that can be the trigger.
When you no longer recognise your life after a bitter break-up, it can feel as if the only aspect you can control is what you eat.
this is something sarah identifies with. she was 46 when her partner of 18 years walked out on her and their 14-year-old daughter without any warning, leaving her feeling broken, depressed and anxious.
SArAH, 50, a contract manager from surrey, says: ‘Like many longterm relationships, ours had turned into more of a friendship, but i thought we were a team who would get through any difficult patches together.
‘He didn’t feel the same. in fact, he told me he was leaving by text. All of a sudden it seemed i wasn’t the one making the decisions about my life. i was trying to work full-time, pay the mortgage and look after our daughter. it was all too much.
‘i started making myself sick after eating. While i’d always been a person who watched my weight, this was the first time i’d ever done anything like this. i was in my mid-40s when i developed bulimia.’
it’s the same for Claire, 45, who developed anorexia after her 11year marriage to the father of her two boys ended two years ago. While it had been her decision to finish a dysfunctional relationship, afterwards she still felt she had lost her identity.
stress caused Claire to lose her appetite — and while she initially enjoyed the compliments she attracted because of the weight loss, restricting what she ate soon became a dangerous habit.
Like Claire, the stress of my marriage imploding meant my appetite melted away. i didn’t feel hungry so lived on little more than a sandwich, an apple and a banana a day, assuming my appetite would return later. My weight dropped to 6st 10lb. i am only 4ft 11in tall, so to begin with i simply looked slim. And people complimented me on how great i was looking, which encouraged me to keep going.
But this meant whenever my eating patterns looked like they were returning to normal, and i might get back to my original weight, i’d go on my crash diet again to lose the extra pounds.
i also started a new relationship within a few months of my breakup. Looking back, it was too soon. i’d had no chance to come to terms with my divorce.
i was devastated my exhusband had not only left me, but also moved so far away. An engineer in the oil business, his new life was based in scotland. He still saw the girls, but couldn’t be a part of their lives in the way he had before.
it felt as if he had rejected everything we’d created together. i felt i was not in control of decisions that affected my life.
Over the next year my battle with food escalated. i’d take the girls to school, go to work for a property investment company and then realise at the end of the day i hadn’t eaten anything.
the misconception that eating disorders mainly affect young women means it can be harder for medical professionals to spot what’s going on, and easy to tell yourself there’s no problem.
i was in denial. i have a marketing degree and accounting qualifications — but you can be well-educated and still not see what’s in front of your eyes.
i persuaded myself i was too busy to eat. But after a while, i realised it wasn’t that i didn’t want to eat but that i couldn’t. i was terrified if i ate just one more calorie a day, i would put all the weight back on.
i cooked lovely meals for my kids but never ate them myself. social situations always involved a meal or a piece of cake. i’d just sit and not eat anything, imagining everyone’s eyes were on me.
i was exhausted and freezing all the time. i remember one halfterm when my girls were staying at their dad’s — a year after we broke up — and were due back the following day. i sat by a radiator in five layers of clothing with my coat on and a duvet wrapped around me. i thought how pathetic i must look.
Logically i knew i needed to eat to live and that i needed to get better, but i had a devil on my shoulder telling me if i got help, they’d make me eat and i’d get fat. this conflict developed into bouts of bingeing, followed by making myself sick.
But because you have to make yourself sick it’s harder to deny bulimia than anorexia, and eventually my sensible side won out.
My GP referred me to a counsellor and i worked hard to change my patterns of behaviour, throwing out my bathroom scales and keeping busy to distract myself from thinking about food and weight.
My new relationship improved and, thinking i’d found true love, Chris and i got engaged. i threw myself into wedding planning. But i became too busy to think about eating. When i lost weight again i convinced myself i wasn’t hungry, but really i didn’t want to put weight back on.
THe pattern continued after the wedding. When i returned to the doctor’s i was told because i’d managed to overcome my problems in the past, i wouldn’t be referred to a specialist again.
i got the impression that because my weight was not then dangerously low — i never looked skeletal — they didn’t see a problem, but they had no idea that the voices in my head telling me not to eat were driving me insane. Older women with eating disorders often say they feel dismissed by medical professionals.
As sarah says: ‘One nurse said to me “Can’t you just stop making yourself sick?” i was made to feel because i was a grown woman i should be able to sort my bulimia out myself. No matter what age you are, eating disorders aren’t something you
can control. They control you.’ In my case, without medical intervention I continued to lose weight and became fixated on exercising. On one holiday I remember obsessively swimming round a crowded pool for an hour. I couldn’t even bring myself to have an ice cream. My poor daughters just wanted to have fun with their mum.
One of my biggest regrets is that while I was always able to provide the girls with food and practical care, I was so selfabsorbed that these feel like ‘lost’ years as a mum.
My weight kept slipping down. At my lowest my ribs were visible and I struggled to sit in the bath as my coccyx pressed against the tub.
EVEnTUAllY I was referred for residential treatment for four months. Here, every morsel I ate was calorie controlled and meal times were heavily policed.
There were group therapy sessions and only when we were considered to have improved enough were we allowed out with staff to cafes to start reintegrating food into our lives.
It was hard on the girls for me to be away for so long. Chris and my family shared their care and we told them I was ill and needed to go to hospital.
What has helped me long-term are two therapies — firstly, mindfulness-based cognitive behavioural therapy, which helps you to become aware of any negative thoughts that enter your mind and to challenge them. The idea is that if you quickly challenge each negative thought, it will become weaker until you can let it go.
I also stumbled upon a complementary therapy called Emotional Freedom Techniques when I was setting up a business to help small firms with marketing, and I have retrained as a practitioner.
The idea is that tapping specific parts of the body in a particular order whenever a negative thought comes into your head helps to short circuit the brain’s fight or flight response — so the thought loses its power.
I realised my ex had not intended to send me tumbling into an eating disorder. My extreme reaction was because of low self-esteem, rooted in me since childhood. Finally I was able to let go of negative thoughts about myself.
Chris and I didn’t last. Once I recovered we realised how wrong we were for each other. We separated in 2012 and divorced two years later.
I am seeing someone new, but we are taking it slowly. My girls are my priority. They went through so much that stability now is the least I can give them. I’ve talked to them about eating in a balanced way and how being skinny didn’t make me happy.
I’m grateful I’ve been able to win my battle. Sarah and Claire are still battling their eating issues.
I’m 42 now and 12 years after my first marriage ended I’m happy and healthy. I love food and I’m content, not just with the body I’ve got and the life I’m living, but with myself. Some names have been changed.
How To Kiss Goodbye To Ana: Using EFT In Anorexia Recovery by Kim Marshall is published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers, priced £12.99. It includes Kim’s own story and practical EFT materials.