The Girl Behind The Blog.
TRIGGER WARNING. Please note that this short blog contains discussions around eating disorders, disordered eating behaviours, mental health (including depression and anxiety) weight, food and body image. Please do not read on if you feel this may not be suitable for you at this time.
If you or anyone you know is living with an eating disorder or struggling with their mental health, consider seeking support from the UK’s eating disorder charity BEAT and Mental Health Charity MIND.
When I first started this blog I was a personal trainer, and it was being a PT that taught me physical wellbeing is unrealistic if your mental fitness is lacking. Ironically, the one thing we have control over: our mind, is so often felt to be controlling us instead. Whilst I will be the first to confess that I tend to bottle up my emotions, I am always humbled when I do talk how much it can help alleviate this feeling - after all, a problem shared is a problem halved. And so, it is only right that considering I began this blog on the basis of helping others, I start things off with my own story, which I hope brings you a sense of calm & reassurance that you’re not alone.
The Beginning
Let’s rewind the clock back to mid 2012, just as I was turning 12-years-old and fresh into being a high-school student. I had always disliked my appearance and compared myself to others, so now being exposed to an environment full of beautiful growing girls only exaggerated my poor confidence. Although I would never blame another person’s beauty for what happened next, this is where problems arose. My own self hatred compelled a desire to change.
My thirteenth birthday came along and I pledged to myself that I was going to make some - in hindsight, unhealthy - changes. By the time I went back to school in September, my body weight had plummeted. I was so… proud. The problem with this ‘success’ is that the things I did, well …worked, and so I became afraid that reintroducing my old ways would reverse my ‘achievement’. This is where I developed an obsessive mindset. I suddenly feared food and LOVED exercise, and anything that challenged me to move away from my daily routines, schedules, eating and exercising patterns suddenly became a threat, and so was ultimately eliminated from my life.
Having meals with friends or family, taking the elevator over the stairs, eating with my family of an evening, and wearing anything but baggy gym clothes was a thing of the past (so rule out social gatherings & connections). Anyone who cared about me enough to question my new life would only have their love thrown back in their face. I definitely wasn’t Amber anymore, but I was still present in my body somewhere. I knew what I was doing was wrong, yet had already handed over the controls to something else.
I had developed an eating disorder. To be specific, anorexia nervosa. Over many years, I was admitted to several hospitals, for both physical and mental complications, and placed under the care of a dietitian, while stubbornly denying there was anything wrong with me. I had developed depression, anxiety, body dysmorphia, as well as other forms of eating disorders. I was completely consumed by voices in my head and the worst thing about mental disorders is that you can’t run away from yourself. You can’t just tear open your mid-section and step out of your skin. You HAVE to stay and deal with the pain and claustrophobia everyday. The most frustrating part is that the only person that’s causing all of this pain is you - you’re your own worst enemy, and yet you simply cannot regain any type of power. I lied my way through everything and became a very deceiving person in order to get my way and continue my destruction. But no matter how much destruction I caused - for both myself and others - I was never quite satisfied.
It wasn’t until 4 years later that I finally admitted to medical professionals that I needed help.
Finding the positive side
Now for a little positivity in the story. I decided there and then that in order to combat this I needed to find another route around the voices and start re-gaining weight. The route I chose was strength training.
I joined a gym, my wonderful parents paid for a personal trainer and I received a huge amount of support from their staff - something I will never forget. I begrudgingly managed to convince myself food was necessary to grow the muscle I was working hard to gain. Don’t get me wrong, this was not a simple process. I was still terrified of food at first and gaining weight, but over the course of three years, my mindset began to shift and suddenly strong women became my new role models. I got discharged from the hospitals under the conditions I was trusted to continue recovery alone.
I went on to gain qualifications to become a personal trainer, then a biomedical science diploma and finally a registered dietitian, holding onto my one and only dream the entire way - to help the thousands of others, who like me, found themselves sucked in by nutritional misinformation, unrealistic beauty standards, and self-sabotage. I came full circle!
Today
Despite my training and day-to-day job in the NHS, I am not immune to the voices my own head and those in my external environment. And whilst it can indeed be exhausting, I don’t think I would change my past or present, because I am not sure I would be the healthcare professional I am today without my lived experiences. I do believe they have given me much more than they have taken.
Today, my goal remains the same as it did all those years back… to help; to give back; to turn a negative into a positive. I essentially just want to be a friend to anyone who needs it. Being a friend and support system is what I endeavour to do for every person who enters my dietetic clinic the NHS. And whilst I love that I get to do that, I still dream of extending my hand to more people. That is why I made this website. And why I dedicate my time outside of my full-time job to running my own business - one that doesn’t just focus on promoting holistic health for humans, but also that of the planet and animals too.
As you can imagine, this story is merely a snippet of my last 12 rounds around the sun, but I sincerely hope reading it has helped in some small way.
here always,
Amb x