Pain in the backside

It's over. Anorexia has won. If this was a boxing contest someone would have thrown in the towel by now. In football terms, it's like Manchester City taking on Macclesfield (or Manchester United). I can't take this torment any more. It's ruined my family life and left me absolutely bereft. How my poor wife deals with it I can't begin to imagine. She just smiles and tells me she loves me even though I feel like I've pretty much abandoned her and my daughter by spending so little time with them. I try to eat more, but all I do is end up exercising more and more, to the extent that I end up doing 2-3 hours on the cross trainer and a walk of at least an hour every day, and even then I still feel like I have energy to burn. This is despite collapsing in bed every day from stomach and nerve pain. This is what anorexia does to you. One day I beat it and I feel proud of myself, but it never lasts. As it gets colder my walks might have to stop because I can't cope in...

Last Friday I had a brilliant session with a psychologist around my anorexia. I felt as relaxed as I had for months and able to cut down on my excessive walking. She pointed out that I put pressure on myself to be productive all the time. Even though I am currently signed off sick I still put on an alarm every day, and my mind is on overdrive all the time; I feel like I am in a rush and I get stressed when I don't get something done or I go to bed late. Her suggestion: go and have some fun. And something clicked in my mind - here was a trained professional giving me permission to enjoy myself, to not waste my time trying to exercise for hours at a time and to spend it doing something where I can switch off for once. It felt like this huge load had been taken off me, that I didn't have to worry about trying to fit in a long walk after my morning cross trainer session. I was already thinking about what I could do with this extra time, whether it be playing games or even just read...

It seems only recently that I was going strong as a journalist, working up to 60 hours a week, starting at 5am most days and sometimes finishing after midnight. I felt fit and energetic despite my IBS and chronic pain and was able to mix watching football, covering elections, breaking big stories and writing interesting features for a living.  I'm now 32 and I work 0 hours a week - and even that feels exhausting. I weigh around 7 stone 6, was recently detained under the Mental Health Act and am now reliant on Universal Credit to live. The Lamy family I feel like a scrounger, which is probably because there is this big narrative that the welfare bill is so high because of the number of people claiming benefits when they are fit to work. It's amazing how much more talk there is around benefits than the billions of pounds lost to fraudulent Covid loans which will never be recovered. Whereas before I would confront politicians and criminals, and rarely feel stressed, now I'd be...