LOVE FOOD AGAIN
When healthy eating goes bad
What happens when messages around healthy eating tip into an unhealthy obsession with stripping everything out of your diet? WH’S Frankie Hill battled with orthorexia for four years – here she talks about gradually rebuilding her relationship with food
It’s August 2012.
I blow out the candles and force a knife through the cake. Well, I say cake, but really it’s more of an oat thing.
made it myself – just oats, banana, cinnamon... and not much else. I’d told Mum not to bother getting me a traditional cake; and she knows there’s no point trying to persuade me otherwise. So now everyone takes a piece of my oaty creation and attempts a polite nibble before discarding it with disgust. I ignore their stealth looks. I’m used to them now; the same sort of looks I get when I go out for a curry with my friends and turn up with my Tupperware; because when you’re a dairy free, gluten-free, sugar-free vegetarian, a sneaky BYO salad is the easiest option. Or like the time we went to a festival and my friends were trawling the food vans while I snaffled handfuls of nuts and fruit – and had to beg a breakfast van to give me some hot water for my porridge oats. They roll their eyes or look concerned. But they don’t say anything. The last year has been so difficult nobody wants to say anything in case it upsets me.
A year ago, my dad died of lung cancer.
You hear those words and you think of a horrible, long drawn-out disease – but, no. His battle was four weeks from diagnosis to the end. That combination of shock and sadness is like being sledge-hammered by grief twice over. For months afterwards, I was terrorised with images of his dying moments until my GP diagnosed me with post-traumatic stress and depression.
In that time, I’d gained half a stone in weight, comfort-eating pizza and only moving between my bedroom and lectures. I was a size 14 and 11½ stone which, on top of everything, was making me feel worse about myself. So I made myself a promise: to get healthy. Sure, I wanted to drop some of the extra pounds, but after a brief dalliance with the Dukan diet, I decided all that restrictive eating wasn’t for me. Instead, I’d just focus on putting good stuff into my body. I soon learned the phrase ‘clean eating’, which pretty much encapsulated what I was aiming for. The first step was cutting out refined sugars and anything processed. Next to go was gluten, after I read how it can cause internal inflammation and aggravate the gut. Then I dropped dairy due to all those hormones in the mass-market dairy industry. And after reading about how we consume the terror of an animal’s dying moments, I gave up eating meat, too.
And weirdly, I guess, I’ve ended up more regimented than I’d been on the Dukan diet
I’d given up. But I felt great – and had lost a stone. I now look at my uni mates eating their kebabs and think, ‘How can you?’ The thought of all that sugar and wheat in a regular birthday cake made me feel sick. So I’m happy with my birthday oat bar, thanks.
NEW YEAR 2013
The holidays have always been about eating myself into oblivion. This year, I manage to do a ‘clean’ Christmas lunch with quinoa stuffing, sweet potato and, since tradition dictates, a sliver of turkey. No more meat though; I’m in the middle of a 30-day vegan challenge. Hardly a ‘challenge’ – the only things left for me to cut out were eggs and feta – but I like the feeling of being so disciplined. And, yes, I like the weight loss, too. At just under nine stone, I’m the lightest I’ve ever been. People have begun to notice. I recently went to a restaurant with a friend – when I ordered a starter salad for my main, she snapped and asked what was wrong. I told her I just wanted to be healthy and there was literally nothing else on the menu I could eat.
It’s not my fault these places don’t cater for healthy people. I’m sick of people questioning me. If they don’t want to look after their bodies, fine, but how dare they judge me for looking after mine?
SPRING 2013
I’m skipping lectures to fit in extra gym classes. I had been on track for a first-class honours degree, but my marks are dragging me down. But I’ve found a routine in my eating and that makes me feel better. At 8am, I have a breakfast of Shredded Wheat, a banana and almond milk. At 1pm, I snack on a satsuma and black (organic) coffee. Then at 4pm, I have a late lunch of avocado on rye bread and an apple. Dinner at 6pm is a butternut squash and chickpea curry with quinoa. I get tired a lot but I always have just enough in me to get to the next meal time. Even if I do feel a bit light-headed after a gym session.
SUMMER 2013
I graduate with a 2:1 and soon it’s birthday time again. No baking this time; I put some candles in a pineapple and serve it to guests with Greek yoghurt. (I skip the yoghurt.)
NEW YEAR 2014
I read an online Women’s Health article about a condition known as orthorexia. It includes questions like ‘Do you think about eating healthily all the time?’ and ‘Does your need to eat healthily affect your social life?’. I answer ‘yes’ for every question. And suddenly, I’m forced to confront something that perhaps I’ve known for a while – that my way of eating is exhausting. I don’t say anything to anyone, but for the first time I question myself.
SPRING 2014
I look down at my plate and see a roast potato and gravy. Instead of saying, ‘I’m not eating it,’ I tentatively tuck in. It has
‘I LIKED THE FEELING OF BEING SO DISCIPLINED. AND, YES, I LIKED THE WEIGHT LOSS, TOO’
happened so gradually, so incrementally, but living back at home for the previous nine months, Mum has gently encouraged me to relax my rules. Most of the time, I feel guilty, like I’m letting myself down – betraying all those self-inflicted principles. They probably seem like minor transgressions to a lot of people but, for me, it’s still a struggle. I still won’t consider eating, say, a pizza or a bar of chocolate – no way. And I don’t like the weight gain; I’m back up to 10 stone. But every time I try to go back to eating as strictly as I’d done before, I just can’t quite go through with it. I don’t have the energy.
‘I’M DETER MINED NOT TO SLIP BACK INTO MY OBSESSIVE ROUTINES’
SUMMER 2014
I start a new job in Topshop and make new friends who don’t know the ‘Healthy Frankie’. I’ve preached about being healthy for so long that I’ve somehow managed to trap myself in my own rhetoric. So now if someone who knows me well sees me eating a crisp, they’ll ask if I’ve fallen off the wagon. I feel embarrassed, ashamed even. But while my new friends still comment on how healthy I am, if I reach for a biscuit at work, no one raises an eyebrow. I feel a sense of freedom I haven’t felt in a long time.
NOW
I have been eating ‘normally’ for more than two years and I am still pretty healthy by most people’s standards. Typically, I’ll start the day with yoghurt and fruit, have a big homemade salad for lunch and fish and sweet potato for dinner. But when I do have something that is less than ‘clean’, I don’t feel guilty. I can grab a burger at the end of a night out and not feel cloaked in shame when I wake the next morning. Yet still, sometimes I have to remind myself that it is okay to have exactly what I want now and then. By keeping myself in check mentally, I’m determined not to slip back into my obsessive routines. I think it is hard for anyone to explain just how and why they came to suffer from an eating disorder – the triggers can be as varied as the sufferers themselves – but I know that for me it happened at a time when I was desperately sad, when life had blindsided me and I craved control. Yet food ended up controlling me. I don’t feel like that any more. It no longer has a grip on me; and nor do I need one on it. It is a good place to be. And this way, you get birthday cake.
If you think you have an eating disorder, call Beat on 0345 634 1414