Fitness coach’s bulimia battle
EXTRA FOLIC ACID FOR MUMS-TO-BE CAN PREVENT CONDITION
AFTER dreaming of having a thigh gap as a teen, this fitness coach’s life began to spiral dangerously out of control.
Weighing just over five stone at the age of 19, Casey Lees-smith was skin and bone and doctors started to fear for her life.
In 2015, working as a cafe supervisor whilst studying at Newcastle University, she was on her feet all day, burning more calories than she was consuming.
Casey had struggled with body confidence as a teen and as she lost weight she received compliments from regular customers. Soon she became obsessed with counting calories.
The 24-year-old, from Newcastle, said: “I finally thought that maybe if I lost more weight people would think I was beautiful and worthy. My life was at an all-time low and I was utterly miserable.
“I would wake up and think about ways to hide how little I would eat and I would over-exercise in order for a quick fix at losing more body fat.
“I felt cold to the core of my bones. I would ache because I had such little body fat and any alone time was spent crying over battling with the voices in my head telling me I wasn’t worthy of food.
“I would lie in the bath for hours to try and keep as warm as I could but staring at my naked body physically repulsed me. Most people would say ‘but just eat something’ and it’s not as easy as that, it’s a mental disorder that consumes your life.”
As a way to cope Casey would search for ‘pro-anorexia’ forums online to help her normalise her behaviour, which spiralled into her becoming bulimic.
Her weight was her only focus, if she ate more than 300 calories she would force herself to vomit.
And during her difficult days, she would binge eat as much food as she could in a short period of time and then relieve herself of the guilt by purging it back up.
Casey pushed her friends and family away as she wanted to hide what she was doing. Feeling alone and isolated, soon her erratic behaviour led her health to seriously deteriorate.
She added: “I started to hear voices in my head with bouts of paranoia thinking that I was being talked about behind my back, I wouldn’t leave the house in the end without one of my parents by my side.
“Every day was a living nightmare. When I was at the point of not being able to leave the house without having a panic attack I finally agreed to seek help with the support of my parents.
“When my mum told the doctor everything that was going on at home because I physically couldn’t speak for myself, I looked her in the eyes and could see how much pain she was in.
“My parents have already lost one child in their lifetime, my older sister, and I was doing this to them all over again. I knew I had a serious condition when the doctors told me that if this continues my heart will not be able to continue and I will end up dead.”
Casey admits she found it hard to accept that she had an actual problem after being in denial about her eating disorder for so long.
After receiving medical help, she decided to move back home where her dad, who is a personal trainer, would be able to support and educate her on healthy calorie consumption.
Fascinated by what she was learning, Casey was inspired to become a fitness coach to help take focus away from her impulsive tendencies and to help others. Two years after her diagnosis and a difficult road to recovery, Casey finally turned her life around and was taken off her medication.
Soon she built up her strength in training and after a year she competed in the UKBFF North Bikini Fitness Competition where she placed 2nd with an invite to the British Championships.
Casey added: “Recovery was a long hard process but I was determined to turn my life around and become a better version of myself.
“Fitness not only changed my life but it saved it, once I had opened the door into properly educating myself there was no looking back.
“I really wanted to take my experience into educating others on properly learning how to love themselves as well as bettering their health.”
Casey has reached out to anyone who needs advice, or to follow her fitness classes, to visit her Instagram page.
WANTING nothing more than to be a parent, Amy Joyce had sought out IVF treatment and was overjoyed when she learnt she was pregnant with a little girl.
But tragedy struck just 16 weeks into pregnancy, when Amy learnt her daughter had been struck by a rare condition which meant survival would be impossible.
Now Amy, from Wallsend, is fighting to raise awareness of the tragic condition in the hope that other parents might avoid the heartache she’s suffered.
After a 12-week scan suggested everything was normal, delighted Amy began making all the preparations for the birth of daughter Eliza, telling family and friends the good news and starting to buy clothes and toys in anticipation of the new arrival.
But just a few weeks later, medics delivered heartbreaking news: Eliza had been diagnosed with encephalocele, a congenital condition causing a cyst from her brain to protrude outside the skull.
In Eliza’s case, it meant surviving pregnancy would be impossible, as the protruding cyst grew aggressively.
Amy said: “After they said everything was fine at the 12-week scan, I thought, that’s a big relief, I don’t need to worry. Just before Christmas, I had a little bit of bleeding, but we still thought everything was fine.
“Then I went in for a scan on December 30, and that’s when I got the news. The nurse went quiet, and I knew something wasn’t right. She went to get a second opinion and when they came back they said there was a cyst on the back of her brain. It was a shock, because they didn’t detect anything at the 12-week scan, but they basically said she wouldn’t be able to survive.
“The worst part was we had to wait a week for the doctors to confirm it – we were reading everything, trying to find out if there was any way she might be able to have a chance. It was just horrible,
being told my child wasn’t going to live, but still carrying her inside me for that last week.”
A week later, the 24-year-old chose to have birth induced, instead of an operation, so that she could see Eliza, and say goodbye to her. After a “horrendous” labour, she stayed in the secluded room at the Royal Victoria Infirmary for three hours, cradling her daughter for the first and final time.
Although it’s not possible to guarantee encephalocele won’t occur, Amy was told that, in any future pregnancies, she should take extra-high doses of folic acid to reduce the chances of it happening again. She learnt that any mums-to-be with any history of neural tube defects, such as spina bifida, in their family, may also take a higher dose of folic acid.
Although she had been taking a normal amount of folic acid during her pregnancy, having an uncle with spina bifida, she said she wished she had known that a higher dose might be needed in her case. She decided to share her story, in the hope of raising awareness of the condition and how to increase the chance of avoiding it. Amy said: “I held her for about three hours after she was born, and it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, to walk away from her.
“Obviously when you go through IVF there’s a higher chance of miscarriage, but it wasn’t due to that, which is the most frustrating part.
“It’s not a case of ‘take more folic acid and it definitely won’t happen’, but it can help. I just wanted to raise awareness of what people can do, not to definitely stop it happening, but to make it less likely.”
Now, Amy treasures the memory box she was given at the hospital, which includes touching mementos like the tiny handprints taken from Eliza. She hopes in future she’ll be able to have another child, who she will tell all about their much-loved older sister.
And she hopes that little Eliza’s story might make all the difference to another family, by raising awareness of the importance of the vital folic acid supplement for other mums-to-be.