About Mwa <3

Hi, I'm Amelia. You might be wondering who the fuck I think I am and what I have to say. Honestly, I get it. I'm not entirely sure where I'm headed with this myself, but I know I need to share my story. I'm not anyone special; I've just been through a lot. By the time I turned 22, I hit a low point where I struggled to see any good in my life—what felt like a midlife crisis. However, I went through something that I believe can be prevented. It shouldn’t have to escalate to the extremes it did, especially if there were more awareness around eating disorders. It's different for everyone, but I grew up around sport and one of the biggest messages it sent me is being 'tough' is a sign of strength. Rest can be seen as a sign of 'weakness.' For me, losing weight was initially about gaining strength and running faster. My progress seemed to justify my actions, but I was wrong. I was slowly deteriorating, and I didn’t even realize it. This is the insidious nature of eating disorders—they can blind you to your own suffering. Without them, it feels as though you can't survive, creating a vicious cycle. That's why I'm writing these blogs. Not because I think I'm important, but because I hope that by sharing my experience, I can help someone who might be struggling to recognize their own illness and understand that they deserve help. A significant part of this struggle is feeling unworthy of assistance or not 'ill enough' to seek it.

Anyways, I digress. This blog is supposed to be about who I am, and what I am actually trying to get across with these blogs. So, who am I? I’m currently studying Psychology at university (coincidence?) and going into my final year — pray I slay my final year. I’m funny, loud, can be annoying, selfless,  friendly, approachable, and I loveeeeeee running and cycling. I say love, it can definitely be hate sometimes, but I know I always feel good afterwards, like I’ve achieved something. Although, this isn’t necessarily a good thing… but we’ll get into that later. I’ve always done sport. Since I was about nine years old, I was going to my local club to train, and I fell in love with racing my bike. From then on, cycling became a huge part of my life. Part of me loved it even more because I shared that passion with my dad. It was our thing, something that felt like it belonged to just the two of us. We would travel around the country almost every weekend, and he would sacrifice so much so that I could race my bike against some of the best girls in the country. I will forever be grateful for all of that because those experiences, and the people around me, made me the person I am today.

However, cycling definitely became my identity. I didn’t really care about much else; I cared about where I finished at the end of a race, and that was effectively how I judged myself. I never really appreciated my personality or who I was outside of sport — I appreciated myself based on how I performed. I think a lot of sportspeople can relate to this. Sport can become everything because the feeling you get when you achieve something you’ve worked ridiculously hard for is like no other. Unfortunately for me, my results eventually started to get worse, and my mental health went with them. One of the last bike races I did, I remember becoming so overwhelmed by anxiety that I cried purely from the pressure I had put on myself to perform, even though I hadn’t had a good result in quite a long time. But everyone dreams, right? Eventually, I got to the point where I couldn’t race anymore, so I just trained. And I think I lost myself along the way. I didn’t feel good enough, I felt embarrassed training with people who had made it onto GB programmes, and I felt embarrassed about my appearance. I didn’t feel like I looked like an athlete, so I didn’t feel like I would be accepted amongst some of the best athletes in the country — literally my friends, which sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud.

That’s when I started running. I had always done a bit of running in the background, but I had never chosen it over cycling. At first, I hated it, but then I became obsessed. As soon as I started, I wanted to look like a runner, so I ate less. Little did I know that the number decreasing on the scale would become an obsession. My world slowly became running, food and numbers. I would wake up, run, eat breakfast, skip lunch, go to lectures, eat a small dinner, go on a walk and then go to sleep. For a while, I actually felt amazing. In fact, I felt the best I had ever felt. But it didn’t last. That’s the scary thing about eating disorders — sometimes, at the beginning, they make you feel like you’ve finally found the answer. Like you’re finally in control, disciplined and becoming the person you want to be. But eventually, the thing you thought was giving you control starts controlling you.

Luckily for me, I have an amazing boyfriend who got me the help I needed and never left my side once throughout this horrible illness. Without him, I’m not sure I would have ever sought help. And that is why these blogs are so important to me. I don’t want to write as though I have all the answers, because I absolutely don’t. I want to write as someone who has been there, who understands what it feels like to be completely consumed by something while convincing yourself you’re fine. I want to be relatable, I want to give an honest insight into the things people don’t always talk about, and most importantly, I want to give people permission to ask for help. Permission to admit that you’re struggling, permission to not be okay, and permission to recognise that you deserve support before things get worse. I want to share the parts of my eating disorder that I used to hide, without pretending that recovery is always easy or that I suddenly have life figured out. If someone reads one of these blogs and thinks, “Oh shit, I thought I was the only person who felt like that,” then I’ve done what I wanted to do. And if someone who is struggling reads my story and thinks, “Maybe I deserve help too,” then these blogs will be worth every word.

This is obviously only a brief overview of my story — there is a lot more to it. In future blogs, I want to talk about the things that happened along the way, what my eating disorder actually looked like behind the scenes, sport and eating disorders, body image, recovery, relationships, the pressure we put on ourselves, and what it is actually like trying to rebuild your life when the thing that once controlled you is no longer in charge. I’ll probably throw in some completely unrelated things too, because as much as this blog is about recovery, it is also about me — and I am far more than my eating disorder.

And, because apparently I don’t have enough going on, I’m also running the London Marathon for Mind. Running a marathon is something I never would have imagined being able to do during the worst part of my illness, and being able to run it now means so much more to me than just getting a medal at the end. I want to use it as an opportunity to raise awareness, start conversations and show that there really can be a life beyond an eating disorder. So, if you fancy following along with that slightly questionable decision too, stick around.

This is just the beginning. I’m still figuring out who I am, still learning, still recovering and definitely still making mistakes along the way. But this time, I’m doing it without hiding.