My fine stomahc is my vanity— audio below content warning
About three days ago, I went out for a late lunch, and I ate like a normal person.
Mind you, when it comes to eating, I am not a normal person. I don’t eat much, and I don’t eat every day. Eating just isn’t a daily thing for me. I’ll explain why in a moment, but first you need to understand how that lunch ended.
A few hours after eating, I started feeling sick. I thought it was just a passing bug, but it didn't end there. It ended in blood. Bright, terrifying blood. It was gruesome, and it scared me to my core.
I went to the hospital, but my throat was so violently inflamed the doctors couldn’t do much except treat the immediate damage. They told me to come back for a follow-up next week. But because I know myself, and because I know my history, I know the sheer anxiety might keep me from ever walking back through those hospital doors.
So, what really happened to me? Here is the unvarnished truth.
The ugly truth about eating disorders is that you rarely just "get better." You heal from one only to fall directly into the arms of another. You start with bulimia. Eventually, you convince yourself you’re getting healthier by giving up certain foods. But slowly, that morphs into severe restriction. You skip days of eating entirely, cut out whole food groups, or rely on gum and medications—anything to win the war against weight gain.
An eating disorder is one of the hardest addictions to break. No amount of therapy has helped me so far, even though therapy has worked for almost everything else in my life.
And if I’m being completely honest, the core issue for me is vanity. It’s not about a desperate need for control. It’s not that I hate myself and want to self-harm through food. No, it is simpler and darker: I am deeply, obsessively vain about weight.
I panic over the thought of gaining a single pound. The panic hits in the middle of the night or the middle of the afternoon. I’ll pull on a pair of jeans……jeans I have repeatedly shrunk in the wash just to test myself—and hold my breath until they zip. I’ll layer leggings on top of leggings, spiralling if they feel even a fraction too tight.
If I feel I’ve gained weight, my life turns into a living nightmare. Is there a reason for it? Absolutely, in my head.
Do overweight people scare me? No. Do I judge them? Never. This is entirely my own issue. I take full responsibility for it, and I blame myself.
I was always skinny as a child, but there was a brief period where I gained weight and felt completely out of place in my own skin. My eating disorder started out of nowhere, and at first, I didn’t even know what it was. I thought I was being clever. I thought, I get to enjoy the flavour of the food, and then I’ll just purge it so it leaves immediately.
It took me seven years to learn the word for what I was doing: bulimia. I was so illiterate about it back then that I didn't even know the medical term existed. I just thought life was great and I had hacked the system.
Back then, I ate everything: pizza, pasta, burgers, hot dogs, turkey, chips piled on top of pizza—you name it, I ate it. Everyone was amazed that I kept my figure while eating like that. My handbag became a portable bathroom kit: toothbrush, toothpaste, mouthwash, and makeup. I’d eat a massive meal, slip into the lavatory, purge in two minutes flat with zero pain, wash my face, and walk out looking in a tip-top shape and ready for the world. I genuinely thought it was the smartest thing I’d ever done. I was thrilled, already planning what I’d eat the next day.
Food was a massive part of my life, right alongside books, art, school, travelling and horse riding. I thought I could have my cake and throw it up too, with no real consequences, What was the toll? A quick two-minute trip to the loo. To me, that was a bargain.
The only real problem was public toilet soap—it never smelled strong enough to wash away what I’d done. So I started carrying travel-sized luxury soaps and hand lotions in my bag. As the years went on, my handbag just kept getting bigger, and I became an expert at hiding it.
I never encouraged anyone else.
I thought I was fine. But after 20 years, the cracks started showing. My hands developed subtle tremors that I blamed on caffeine. Purging started feeling exhausting—not because my body was collapsing (or maybe it was ), but because it was time-consuming and I just wasn't in the mood anymore.
What really made me cut back on purging, though, wasn't just wanting to lose more weight. It was the crushing shame. I felt so horribly guilty for all the food I was throwing away. I was so disgusted with myself that I thought, You know what? I deserve to burn in hell.
I figured if I was going to rot in hell for throwing food away, I just shouldn't purge. And to avoid purging, I shouldn't eat to begin with.
That was how I stepped out of one nightmare and straight into another—like dropping deeper through the levels of Dante's Inferno. But this level, starving instead of purging, felt more merciful than the one before. Or at least, I lied to myself and pretended it was.
I stopped liking the act of eating altogether. I woke up one day and decided eating wasn't chic. I found I could feel full just by watching videos of people eating or reading about food history. I used diabetes medications to kill my appetite. I used my chronic headaches as an excuse to take Topamax, a drug that completely wiped out my desire for food although i could have taken another medication, but I refused.
In recent months, I’ve moved to eating only once, twice, or maybe three times a week. Very small amounts. The rest of the time, I just drink coffee, tea, water, or soda and keep going.
What’s happening now is that my stomach has stopped emptying properly. Red flags are popping up everywhere across my body, but I stay quiet. I know if I talk about it, I won't get support—I'll just get shamed. And I refuse to be shamed. Sometimes I don't even want support; I just want to walk alone.
That brings us back to three days ago. The blood. The hospital. The raw, burned throat. Now I’m sitting here, trying to convince myself I can fix this with soups and liquids on my own before going back to the doctor.
Why am I sharing all of this?
Because people say, "Don't develop an eating disorder," as if it’s that easy. Just don't do it.
I wish I could go back. I understand now why I woke up one day years ago and stopped eating meat—not for religious reasons, but because it suddenly tasted wrong. If you can sit down, eat a meal, and just be happy, I am genuinely happy for you. I can still tell when something tastes good.
Is it too late for me? Probably. Probably it's too late for me to indulge without consequences.
Is there such a thing as a balanced diet? I don't think so. But there is such a thing as taking a few bites of something wonderful. Food is truly one of the great joys of life. There's a reason humans have gathered around it, fought over it, laughed over it, and built cultures around it for thousands of years.
Food always made me smile. Beside food, horses made me smile. Art made me smile. Diamonds made me smile. Books made me smile. But a good bite always brought a genuine smile to my face. And on the days I couldn't smile, it warmed my soul.
this is not over, but I know that food is no longer something I can enjoy freely, and I know that everything will be alright, there are plenty of wonderful things in life beside food.
Bon Appetit!
Potato Puree with demi-Glace oyster mushrooms chives and asparagus