Gaining.

I thought I'd create this post as I know people have approached me on how I gained weight and the mentality I put myself into. I spent months trying to find the right method for me so I think it would be helpful as not many websites are widely available for the recover process on gaining weight and the feelings that come along with it.

First of all I am in no way a medical professional, so if you are suffering from an Eating Disorder and/or underweight, then I suggest you go to your local GP and get the right care and help before anything else.

After starting my Therapy for my Eating Disorder I was given a list of changes I should make to my diet and also an eating plan so I had the right food groups. For every meal I had to have dairy, protein and carbohydrates, which to be honest I thought would be easy, but having to have 3 meals a day plus 4 snacks a day...i'd never been so shocked in my life.
I was told to change from semi-skimmed milk to full fat milk, yet to also fortify everything. Cheese on cheese, powdered milk in milk, those were the things i just could not push myself to do.
I was not allowed to have fruit as a snack, that would just be something i eat at any time during the day, yet also i couldn't really have crisps etc. Rice pudding, yoghurt's, biscuits, and oat bars started consuming my life as my snack because they were so high in calories and good fats.
There was no perfect journey for me, relapses, tears and arguments with my mother were constantly there.
After quite a bad relapse and going down near enough to my original weight, i decided to start looking at different shakes, as protein didn't do a single thing for me and just made me feel really ill.
One day myself and my mum went to the shops and looked down the health isle and we came across a make called Complan and they had a variety of powdered shakes and even soups. After discussing these with my doctor we had decided that i would start taking them with milk twice a day, with breakfast and with tea in hope of me gaining weight that i really needed to be put back on.

If anyone comes to ask me about gaining weight i ALWAYS recommend complan. The sheer fact it helped me, but also tasted damn good, really did do the trick for me and it helped me a lot during me recovery and to keep on gaining weight.

If you have read this and would like more information/advice or even just someone to talk to, contact me at emmavickers998@hotmail.com and i am always happy to answer questions in any shape or form.

In the words of Mr Keating, Life is a Rollecoaster.

Recovery is like an elimination process.

First and most important step is to accepting you have a mental illness. For me it was easy to accept that I had an Eating Disorder, it was harder when I was told I had Depression a year previous.
Then you need to actually make to decision to want to save your life and to make the biggest change of your life. This was actually the hardest thing i've ever had to do. I made out that I wanted to be better and wanted a healthy lifestyle, when deep down my illness was not letting me.

It always sounds bizarre as I refer to my Eating Disorder like it's a living thing. I refer it as a problematic disease that sometimes makes an infestation inside my head and just takes away my life. This really is a case after being diagnosed, it needs to feed on you to live. It does anything and everything to put up a fight and keep you in a downwards spiral to your ultimate death. After weighing myself i'd go into denial and be secretly mortified if i had gained weight then back to starving i would go, then try to pick myself back up for a week or two, to just waste it all again.
This had naturally been going on since i was 12/13 so it had become a routine of mine to lie, hide food, starve myself in order to get skinny.

After 3 months of Therapy and lots of tears from myself and my family, i had finally made the decision that i actually wanted to recover and this time i meant it deep down.
I spent months having panic attacks from eating food, having a completely different day of food intake and to altering my mind.

I was certainly a very negative person for most of my life, i thought all this determination was going to be a waste. Sometimes i was willing to accept my fate.

Eventually getting up to 7 and a half stone, i had started being able to wear less layers, be more active, being less dizzy, and most of all, gaining control of me being happy and to accept and love food.

After being in self exclusion for a year i started living my life again. Going out for meals with my family was the proudest moments in my life, and i cannot tell you how happy i was when not only my mother said she was proud of me, but her boyfriend, and my grandparents.

Sadly i haven't been doing aswell the past 3 weeks and i had lost half a stone, but after crying in the doctors afterwards, i am more committed than ever to gain my weight, and beyond.
I want to get to the point where i never have to have a blood test in fear of my organs being harmed. I want eating to be an automatic thing and not to be thought about.

Above all, i want to tell myself i am proud for giving myself the strength and determination to have my life back for the first time in a decade and to be like any other person my age.

Take action

Since being in recovery for the past 7 months I have always been a keen enthusiastic person on helping people who are both ashamed and open about their Eating Disorder. I have had many people confiding in me, even when their closest friends do not know of the problems they are battling with. This personal involvement with people has helping myself to recover as much as possible and eradicate my old unhealthy and dangerous thoughts and help and advise people in the process.

I've always been open about my struggles and recovery process, but I think it's time to address something that I never thankfully knew about....Pro-Ana/Mia websites/blogs.

"Pro-ana refers to the promotion of the eating disorder anorexia nervosa. It is often referred to simply as "ana" and is sometimes personified by anorexics as a girl named Ana. The lesser-used term pro-mia refers likewise to bulimia nervosa and is sometimes used interchangeably with pro-ana.
Pro-ana organizations differ widely in their stances. Most claim that they exist mainly as a non-judgmental environment for anorexics; a place to turn to, to discuss their illness, and to support those who choose to enter recovery. Others deny anorexia nervosa is a mental illness and claim instead that it is a "lifestyle choice" that should be respected by doctors and family" - Taken from Wikipedia.

I only really found out about these websites after being diagnosed 2 years ago and thankfully when curiosity got the best of me, I was absolutely horrified of what I was reading and the pictures that were being posted. For me, Tumblr is disgustingly full of these blogs and some actually contact people with Eating Disorder's and tell them that they look fat and other very harmful things that should never ever be said not only to a healthy person, but saying this to a person with an Eating Disorder can potentially cause their unhealthy illness to kill them.

• 1.6 million people within the UK alone suffer from Eating Disorders.
• Eating Disorders have the highest mortality rate
• Only 1 in 10 people receive treatment.
• 30% of sufferers have it long term 40% fully recover.

We have the highest rate for Eating Disorders in Europe if that isn't such a huge shock I don't know what is.
Recently, more well known people within the music/acting industry have became more open about suffering from Eating Disorders thus making people more aware of how many people actually struggle with it. Here are a few celeb's that have admitted to suffering from an ED.

• Lady Gaga
• Sharon Osbourne
• Nicole Richie
• Mary Kate Oslen
• Felicity Huffman
• Isabella Caro
• Ana Carolina Reston
• Lily Allen
• Audrey Hepburn
• and her late Princess Diana

Recently I came across Franca Sozzani who has spoken publicly about wanting to eradicate Pro Ana/Mia websites after coming across a few on Facebook. She has recently posted a speech for Harvard that can be found here, but also she crated a petition that we all should sign which is to battle for all Pro Ana/Mia or Thinspiration sites to be shut down and Vogue Italia is doing it's best to support this

"Fashion has been always blamed as one of the culprits of anorexia, and our commitment  is the proof that fashion is ready to get on the frontline and struggle against the disorder."

I feel so strongly about this and have also emailed B-Eat about wanting to be a dedicated part of the team. It would mean a lot if you supported this and signed this petition so we can make a difference and possibly save people's lives.



"It is of paramount importance to explain teenage girls that being skinny does not equal being perfect and to promote beauty standards which  start from and are all about being healthy."



For more information
http://www.disordered-eating.co.uk/
http://weighingthefacts.blogspot.co.uk/
http://www.b-eat.co.uk/
http://www.eating-disorders.org.uk/