Recovery story

Katie Houghton

I am writing this as I know that when you are the tight grasp of an eating disorder it feels like it will always be that way and it will be your way of life forever but I want to hopefully give a bit of hope to people who are in that situation and feel that way at the moment like I did that it doesn’t have to be like that.

I am 25 now and have been completely free of an eating disorder for over a year and I can honestly say that I live my life everyday without even giving a second thought to food or my weight. I eat what I want when I want to, I enjoy it and I am happy with my body!

I became enveloped in the world of anorexia when I was about 18, that’s when I started thinking about my weight. I believe this kind of thinking is an eating disorder-it doesn’t matter what actual weight you are in my opinion, I have been a normal weight and still felt and thought the same way, so this is a misconception I’d love to get rid of!

Between the ages of 19 and 23 I had an admission to day care where I went everyday 8am-4pm for four weeks and following that three inpatient admissions the first being 5 months, the second nearly 6 months and the third a couple of weeks. It is a horrible, frustrating time being in hospital, being away from home for such a long time and feeling so down and like a failure was awful.

Living in the world of anorexia is awful and it’s so frustrating to hear people make comments on it who don’t understand and think that girls do it because they want to be thin/pretty etc. It’s so untrue, the truth is, or was in my case that when you are completely entrenched in that way of thinking and daily routine of obsessions, numbers and little food your brain isn’t working or thinking properly anyway so the last thing on my mind was that I wanted to be thin and pretty-I couldn’t have cared less! It’s an exhausting, time consuming, isolating way of living that is a way of coping with other things or feelings.

One day after being in hospital something flipped in my head like a switch, I’m not saying the process is that simple for everybody, I have friends that I met through the years who have been through a longer process to get where they are now but for me that’s what happened, I’d had enough I realised that it wasn’t going to solve anything, it was in fact making me feel more down, making push away my friends, it was making me ill, I was wasting parts of my life spending periods of it in hospital, my feelings and problems were still there I just now had another one but most of all I WANTED to get well. It’s a hard thing to admit but after speaking to so may people I know I wasn’t the only one to think that I didn’t want to or for some reason couldn’t let it go. For me and practically every one I have spoken to there is a reason you just have to find out what it really is and deal with THAT and want to get better and want to do the things that are so so hard but are necessary for recovery. So I spoke and thought about a lot of things and started to get better.

Now at 25 and though I still regret sometimes the time that I lost through it I don’t think I’d change it, I have met some great people who are still best friends and I think I’ve learnt a lot from it.

I always wanted to look in to modelling but because everything started not long after I started to look in to it I put it all to one side.

I’m now an England finalist for Miss Earth this year! As well as doing some other things and it has given me a huge boost and showed me that nothing is impossible, you can do the things you want to do and follow your dreams no matter what has happened!

Although I have still had some extremely difficult times and continue to have them, including my granddad who I was very close to, passing away from cancer a few months ago and how easy it would have been to slope back in to old ways and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t cross my mind I know it’s not the answer and it won’t fix anything.

All I would say to anybody reading who is struggling, KEEP GOING! It doesn’t feel like it but it can and does change! It’s hard but the life you have after going through the hard part is SO much better and so worth it!