First post on eating disorder self help group.

Just to let everyone know a little about me without me telling everyone the same thing.

When I left school at the age of 16, I didn’t know my weight, I used to baby sit for a friend and before they went out on a girlie night they weighed themselves, when they had gone and the kids were in bed I decided to weigh myself. I knew I was big but didn’t know I was that big; the scales nearly went all the way round, 19st 2lb. I was devastated, and needed help, but had no one to turn to. My mum and dad were going through a bad patch, and I managed to persuade her to take me to the docs.

I started to lose weight properly with the nurse, but as the story goes, my weight started to plateaux. twelve months later, even though I was working, I then lost my job and turned to exercise, and not eating much, in fact not much at all. My weight dropped. Started work again and my weight loss slowed down once more, I then started making myself sick.

When I met my first boyfriend Paul, no one knew I suffered as I did and it was very hard for me to tell him, no man had ever shown any interest in me before and I was scared, with his support I went to the doctors and went to an ed unit. I got a lot better, and was left with an open appointment; I even came off the antidepressants.

Then I hit a real bad patch a few moths later in 2000, I came off my motorbike and injured my knee, I was off work in total 6mths, and piled the weight on as I was comfort eating.

I attempted suicide, and admitted myself to the local hospital, as I was so depressed, I needed to get away from my whole life, sort things out in my own head. Everyone asks do I regret doing it, I say no. I regret the hurt I caused, as you don’t think of that at the time, but it was a turning point in my life. I was in for a week and came out fighting, it took twelve months for me to get something like normal, and have been about 80-90% better ever since, with the odd bad relapse.

Hope this isn’t too much, but it tells you the sort of person I am today. A FIGHTER… Take care everyone… luv D