Introducing Myself

My name is Nicola Sue Hall, I’m 28 years old and I have an eating disorder. I suffer from binge eating and compulsive overeating.

The main reasons why I decided to battle with my eating disorder publicly are firstly that I need to be honest with myself and the people around me and secondly, that it might help others deal with their eating disorder.
It is my belief that in order to move forward you have to know where you came from. Any eating disorder is a behaviour which is triggered by certain situations or thoughts and can be changed. Just taking that behaviour and changing it is a good start, but I think that understanding why you behave in a particular way is even more important, so that other, more effective ways of dealing with the triggers can be found.

To understand my behaviour I had to start at the beginning, looking back at the story of my life. Here it is:

My childhood, although generally happy, was clouded by issues such as a teacher who would humiliate me in front of my peers and an expectation of extremely high achievement from my father. This conditioned me to expect more than perfection from myself, setting extremely high standards which aren't ever achievable. This has had effect on my self esteem and later helped contribute to my use of food and alcohol to help me cope.
At 16 I went abroad for a year. Left to my own devices, I started eating what I wanted (all unhealthy stuff obviously) and as much as I wanted. No wonder that during the course of that year I gained 20kg (over 3 stone). After my return to Germany I was able to rein things in a little, but it was usual for me to eat just because I wanted something, not because I was hungry.
At 20 I moved to Scotland, and I ended up doing my degree there. Things became much worse during my second and third year at university. My parents got divorced during that time, the workload was stressful and my relationship started going seriously wrong. My portion sizes grew to massive amounts, the food choices became increasingly unhealthy. Worst of all, during that time I started eating in secret, sneaking food into the house or gobbling it down before I got to the door. I hit absolute rock bottom in fourth year, when I was practically constantly drunk and always at bursting point. I hid in my bed or in my room, spent ridiculous amounts of money on food and was eating constantly. If it wasn’t a blackout binge then it was an overeating binge, but there was always food going into my mouth. I was physically and mentally finished at the end of fourth year, with 123kg (over 19.5 stone) at my heaviest and it was then that I realised that this behaviour wasn’t normal and that I needed to do something about it.
Once I figured out that I had an unhealthy relationship with food I went back to Germany, away from where it got so out of control, away from the people who where there when it got out of control, away from the situation and into a new start to try to deal with it. I accessed therapy for my depression and eating difficulties which even over two years sadly did not do much for me at all.
Then I was given the opportunity to attend a six week intensive therapy at a rehab clinic in the middle of 2009. This was the turning point for me. It seemed like the penny had dropped, like I was finally able to see through the behaviour and change it. Currently I weigh in at 96kg (just over 15 stone). However, life has now got complicated and very, very frustrating again, and I have, over the last 6 months, been slipping back into the old coping mechanisms and need to address this before it goes completely out of hand again. 

I invite you to take the journey with me.

I will be using the same tools that helped me so much during and after the rehab, and hope they help someone else too.