Thank you for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page. I'm going to be doing the Great North Run for BEAT, the UK's Eating Disorder Charity.

Now, when we think of eating disorders, we tend to think of six stone bulimic young women who want to look like Cheryl Cole, or gaunt, depressed self-harming teenagers.

But from where I see things, and from my own experience, eating disorders and body image disorders are pretty ubiquitous amongst my generation, and even older generations. And it’s become a bit of a societal crisis.

Let’s be honest, there are a lot of people who have some pretty significant issues when it comes to eating habits and general body confidence. And this is amongst ‘normal’ people who we wouldn’t remotely suspect to be suffering, and they themselves would vehemently deny that they have a problem if asked. And I see this almost every day.

People who claim to have a flexible diet, but count calories and macronutrients with dogmatic obsession. Great, you’re eating cookies whilst sneering at a punnet of strawberries, but you’ll break into a state of anxiety if you can’t log the calories and macros on MyFitnessPal?  “You’re still in a thought prison, you just decided how big your cell was going to be”.

On the flip side you’ve got a lot of people who will only eat ‘clean’ foods in the week, but spoon feed themselves into Nutella-based oblivion every weekend, like a duck being used to make mouldy chocolate flavoured foie gras. That’s not ‘balance’, that’s a double diagnosis of orthorexia and binge eating disorder.

You’ve also got people who will regularly starve themselves all day to make room for a bottle of wine that evening, sacrificing satiety and nourishment for vomit, memory loss and acting like a prick in front of their peers.

Or people who are taking potent fat burners when they haven’t even cultivated a remote physical foundation or base of fitness and nutritional knowledge. Great, you’ve lost half a stone for your holiday (which you’re gonna put straight back on, and probably more), but you still have no idea how (or the motivation/work ethic to) eat and train properly.

And I don’t mean this to be scornful here. I’ve been there myself. And I still sometimes fall into bad habits. A few years ago, I competed in a few fitness competitions. I looked pretty decent, but I was harbouring a number of body image and eating disorders. I didn’t think I was in good enough shape. I was counting macros religiously in the week, but skipping meals at weekends so I could drink more vodka. I was up for trying pretty much anything that would suppress my appetite. And I still didn’t even place in the Top 3 of the fitness competition I was ‘prepping’ for!

Eating disorders don’t just manifest themselves in physical appearance. There are a lot of people who look perfectly normal, but have deeply rooted emotional issues with food, their body image, and their self-confidence.

And if you do, that’s cool. This isn’t about being condescending or negative. It’s how you decide to respond to it that’s important.

We can blame Instagram, modern advertising, and the intrinsically deceptive nature of the booming fitness and sports nutrition industry all we want, but that’s not going to effectuate any positive changes.

I think we need to be introspective. And if there’s a problem there, we need to be honest with ourselves. We need to talk to people. And if we think we need help, we should go and see someone about it.

Beat is the UK’s eating disorder charity.

I want to help raise awareness and change the conversation when it comes to eating disorders. 

If you've made it this far down the page, I admire your resolve. And if you wish to donate anything at all towards my cause, you truly are a Saint!

Thank you.
Daz