Over 1.6M people in the UK suffer from an eating disorder and nearly four years ago, I became yet another victim of Anorexia Nervosa. This is a cruel and relentless illness that nearly cost me my life back in 2016 during my second of four inpatient admissions in specialist hospitals for eating disorders across the country. Anorexia Nervosa, whilst often picked up in sufferers because of its physical manifestations, is fundamentally a complex MENTAL illness from which less than half of its sufferers ever fully recover.

Since my diagnosis, I have battled this life-threatening mindset everyday but I am not the only one who has been affected. My family were left emotionally broken as they were forced to watch as I slowly shrank in every possible way from a happy, life-loving girl to someone who became too weak to walk, too sad to stop crying and eventually too consumed by this hideous illness to drink even one sip of water let alone contemplate eating food. For three years, I believed that I was a lost cause, that my life was never going to be anything more than this illness. Despite working with the industry’s most well-regarded experts to find a way out, I remained trapped in a continuous cycle of relapse-recovery.

However in January this year as I was facing the prospect of a fifth inpatient admission, something finally ignited some fire inside me to realise that this was no way to keep living. Exhausted with the empty promises that Anorexia provided me with, I finally decided to fight the unforgiving mindset to gain the weight I needed to get me physically into a safer place. For me, this change wasn’t necessarily triggered by a successful treatment model but rather time spent back in the real world again with friends and family teaching me that even if for just a few minutes, things or experiences could bring that well-worn smile back to my face. 9 months on from this light-bulb moment, I finally feel like I’m living again. Even though the photos above show my physical progress over the past four years, I am not ‘better’ just because I have gained weight. My mental battles remain but I’m slowly learning how to manage and control this illness. It is a battle that sometimes feels impossible but I now have a life worth the fight.

As many will know, sport always used to be a major part of my very healthy and happy life before it became yet another aspect of my eating disorder. After four years, I finally feel up to the challenge of re-learning how to exercise for positive reasons. I am still supported by a medical team and I will be working with them to achieve this new challenge safely.This swim will be the first target of this personal mission and so I’ve decided to combine it with the opportunity to raise as much as I can to support the loved ones of those fighting Anorexia. I owe my life to my family and friends — I quite simply wouldn’t be here if my parents hadn’t fought to find me the acute medical care that I desperately needed to save my life and keep me alive until I found the strength to fight the illness for myself.

This event is known as the Ultimate Marathon 10km Swim. I will be completing this as part of a team of 3 compromising my father, my uncle and me. I aim to complete the majority of the swim with my uncle, an elite competitive swimmer, swimming the rest and providing the sporting tactics. As for Daddy, well it won’t surprise many to discover that he will be sticking to what he believes he does best... bossing us about from the sidelines!!

Life in and out of eating disorder units for months and years on end can be incredibly dark and isolating. For me, it actually led to a worsening of my depression which led to self-harm and suicidal tendencies as an attempt to deal with this. However, I was very lucky to have family and friends that had both the time and means to visit me and take me out on fun day trips when I was physically well enough for some leave. These visits and trips inspired me each week to hang on in there for the week after and not give up on living. Not everyone I lived with in hospital had these uplifting opportunities owing to their familial circumstances and on several occasions, I saw fellow teenage inpatients try to take their own lives. This must change and so I would like to do my bit to try to improve this. I am therefore aiming to raise money without which many families would struggle financially to visit their children (often admitted to hospitals at the opposite end of the country to them) and give them inspiring days out from Newbridge - the adolescent unit that I was admitted to twice. A nurse once told me that there was a life before Anorexia and there would be one after. I now realise that maybe she was right after all.

Thank you to everyone who has been there for my family and me since this nightmare began and thank you for anything that you feel you can give to support such an important cause so close to our hearts.