Lydia Davies - Raw - The diary of an anorexic

Peace out.

I felt very left out, which prompted me to make a very DRASTIC decision … I was going to try a parsnip. I picked one out of the bowl in the middle of the table and dropped it in to my Tupperware, examining the coating of honey and oil as precisely as I possibly could. I took a tiny bite, and OH MY GOD IT WAS INCREDIBLE. I ate the whole holy parsnip piece, and proceeded to pile another eight onto my plate. I genuinely had never tasted anything so amazing in my life as the sacred honey-glazed parsnip. I ate more and more of them, my family staring at me in both amazement and shock. I then asked for more and my father suggested that I might have had enough and should probably stop. I flew into a silent fury, ran upstairs and cried my eyes out, humiliated. I rang my boyfriend in tears for comfort, and then fell asleep for three hours from exhaustion, missing the present opening. It is a horrible feeling to have everyone begging and pleading with you to eat more constantly, only to have those same people tell you to stop eating when you are finally discovering the pleasure in food. It was both an infuriating and embarrassing concept to me. I understand that they guessed how bad I would feel after consuming so much, and they were probably trying to spare me from the painful emotions that would undoubtedly follow; but I just didn’t understand how they decided and assumed that they had the right to tell me NOT to eat after telling me to eat for so long! I was five fucking stone, for god’s sake, and all I ate was a few damn parsnips. They were all over double what I weighed, and had been stuffing their greedy gobs all day with piles of fatty foods. HOW DARE THEY? I would class this parsnip incident as my first binge, and there were many more to follow.

My blog post

Hours pass at a time as I drift between thought and sleep through the night.

From the Eating Disorder Service, NHS

Dear Dr *******,

Re: Lydia Davies. DOB 04.08.1991.

Thank you for referring the above patient to the Eating Disorder Service. Lydia was seen by me for assessment on 12/12/11.

Presenting problem:

Lydia suffers with anorexia nervosa.

Past history:

Lydia describes the problem originating in depression. She has also become vegan as a bet with her brother at Easter 2010, and had started losing weight due to the change in her diet. This got worse in the summer after she was diagnosed with genital warts and found the diagnosis and treatment humiliating and felt unable to tell anyone about it. She spent a lot of time alone over the summer and said she spent too much time thinking, which made things worse. Her weight had dropped from around 60kg at Easter in 2010 to 47kg in the summer of 2011. Since returning to university in September her weight loss seems to have escalated and by the beginning of December 2011 she was 37kg. She is aware that others think this is a problem and she is very underweight, but Lydia’s understanding of how serious this is appears to fluctuate somewhat.

Current eating pattern:

At assessment Lydia described following a vegan diet and avoids wheat as she believes she may be wheat intolerant. She doesn’t eat nuts as she doesn’t like them and tends to avoid carbohydrates.

A typical day’s diet would be:

Breakfast – two spoons of oats

Lunch – salad with beans or tofu

Dinner – soup with salad and some kidney beans

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