An Apple a Day (3 page)

I will remember that meals happen three times a day, that
people eat food and use it up and then eat again
: it's OK, it's normal. I won't tell myself that fruit is a meal or that eating a bunch of grapes is OK for lunch. I will gain the 10 or 20 pounds I need and I won't get depressed about this process. I won't panic when people tell me I look “well'; I won't assume they mean “fat.”

Of course the fact that I'm setting these rules is part of the problem, isn't it? I need to learn how to relinquish control and instead I'm hanging onto it. But I can only do what I can do. If I redraw the boundaries around food and eating, at least I'll know what I'm aiming for.

And here's the final blow:
I will eat more
. The accepted figure from health experts is 3,500 calories a week to gain or lose a pound of weight. That means I have to eat 500 extra calories a day, in whatever shape or form, and not increase my exercise and not cheat. My sister calls me the food dodger. She says I can spot a bagel coming a mile off and dodge it . . .

So, it's 4
PM
and I've eaten a banana today. What's so hard about this? Why, even after this full declaration, can't I just stand up and walk over to the fridge?

Chapter 1

The Fallout

“
I've never told anyone this before. I have anorexia. I'm saying this for the first time in my life
.”

T
hat was a young man, a complete stranger, writing to me. He was responding to my first article in
The Times
. What he didn't understand was that I was saying it publicly for the first time in my life too.

The column I now write every week had started as a one-off feature—I'd contacted the weekend editor at
The Times
to pitch the idea and she said yes. It was only after the feature was published and readers got in touch saying they wanted to hear more that we realized the potential for a regular column following my journey to beat anorexia.

It was one thing to make the declaration in the newspaper, quite another to follow through. Soon after that first article was published I had a mini-breakdown. I'm no stranger to depression—when you're severely malnourished, it's perfectly logical to feel low—but this was different. I'd decided to tell the world about my deepest secret. I was ashamed, of course, but I was also scared.

By exposing myself in this way, I was acknowledging that something was very wrong in my life. I had declared my hand
and now I'd have to do something about it. “My name is X and I'm an alcoholic” is what they say at AA meetings, right? For my entire adult life I've been pretending I'm fine
(I've already eaten, thanks, I'm not hungry
. . .) but now I was admitting that I wasn't fine at all. And I was doing something I never, ever do: I was asking for help.

What frightens me now is leaving the eating disorder behind. I've been anorexic for more than ten years. It's part of who I am.

* * *

It happened that the weekend my first article appeared in
The Times
we were abroad. Tom was working on his latest book about high-speed travel and how Europe was opening up to the U.K. We'd spent much of that autumn and winter exploring fascinating European cities: Antwerp, Rotterdam, Girona, Bruges, and this weekend, in mid-November, we were in Lausanne. I hadn't told anyone except my family that I was writing a piece about anorexia, and I welcomed the chance to escape.

I will always remember that trip. We arrived at the Beau Rivage Hotel in Lausanne on Friday evening, weary from our early start and the long train journey. As usual on our weekends away, we lit some candles and shared a bubble bath, winding down gradually. We ordered room service and then watched a couple of episodes of
The Wire
. With our incessant traveling we'd become hooked on DVD box sets—from
Downton Abbey
to
Mad Men
to
Shameless
; we always had one on the go. This weekend Tom had bought
The Wire
, a series going back five seasons, which we had both missed the first time around. Even as we watched, episode after convoluted episode, we kept asking each other why
The Wire
had achieved such status
as a cult classic. We both agreed the scripts were hopeless, the acting was patchy (Dominic West's American accent was painful!), and the plot lines were incomprehensible—but we too got addicted nonetheless.

We were staying in the penthouse suite, with panoramic views overlooking Lake Geneva. It had an elegant, high-ceilinged bedroom, a separate living room, and a spacious marble bathroom. After dinner we went down to the lake and wandered along the shore in the darkness. It was a chilly evening, but the air was crisp and the sky was full of stars. On our way back we stopped at the hotel bar for a nightcap—Baileys for me, amaretto for Tom—and went to bed around midnight.

I lay awake, worrying about what I'd done. I remember thinking:
The newspaper will be at the printers—It will be in the vans now—What on Earth have I done?—How can I undo this?
I felt as though I had planted a bomb and run away.
Maybe I could stay in Lausanne
, I thought—
Graham Greene spent his final years here after all, it can't be such a bad place
—hiding away from the shameful confession I'd made. Eating disorders are for teenagers, not adults—what would happen next, would I be expected to start eating? I imagined myself starting to eat and never being able to stop. Around 4
AM
, I fell into a restless sleep.

Next morning we got up early. Tom was refreshed from a good night's sleep; I was low but kept it to myself. We went downstairs to the swimming pool and spa, a stunning glass creation overlooking the vast blue lagoon. The pool was empty at that time on a Friday morning, although a couple of Swiss bankers pounded the treadmills in the fitness center. We swam a few lengths and gazed out across the lake; I felt revived and restored by the water. Back upstairs, Tom ordered breakfast while I showered, then we sat on the balcony, sipping coffee in our bathrobes.

The newspaper arrived with the breakfast tray. We turned to the
Weekend
section—and there I was, in a pale pink cardigan and dark blue skinny jeans, splashed over a double-page spread.
The Times's
photographer had been to my flat the previous week, a friendly guy who chatted about a photo shoot with George W. Bush in Texas while he snapped away. I hadn't seen the image they were planning to use, nor the final version of my article. Their headline shocked me:
Diary of an anorexic, aged 32
. My cheeks burned with the shame of the “A” word; was that really me they were talking about? My name stood out in bold: not much room for doubt.

We spread the newspaper on the table between us and read in silence. There it was, anorexia, in black and white for anyone to read. Yes, my aim had been to write an honest article, but I hadn't expected to feel like this. Was I being naive? Confessional journalism was one thing but this was different, like someone getting ahold of my diary and printing it.

I finished reading it and felt . . . OK. A bit raw, but OK. The photograph could have been worse. The headline was awful (that label, “anorexic”) but they hadn't messed about with my actual copy. I turned to look at Tom and he had tears rolling down his face. “I'm so proud of you, love.” He came around the breakfast table and hugged me.

* * *

Returning to London from that weekend in Lausanne, I was overwhelmed by the response to my original article. I received hundreds of emails—from strangers, friends, old flames. After I got over my initial feelings of shame, I began to see that I wasn't the only one. I already knew that a lot of women felt bad about their bodies. What I didn't realize, until recently, was how
bad women felt about their appetites, about being hungry and needing food and the simple act of feeding themselves.

Although anorexia is a predominantly female illness, I began to see how many men are also affected by it. There were emails from husbands, partners, and fathers.

One man wrote:

I have just been discussing your article with my daughter—it's the first time we have ever talked about this. She is eighteen years old and has been anorexic for two years now. She has many of the same thoughts and issues you have expressed, but she seems not to want to change at the moment or accept help
.

Another father wrote:

As the father of an anorexic daughter, I read your article with much interest. I also listened to you on Radio 4. Firstly, thank you for being so open and honest about the disease. My daughter has been anorexic for over seven years but is now managing to do a degree at university. I fear that she may never recover or have children, and I wish you and your boyfriend every success. Please keep writing and informing people about how you're coping . . . I am sure it will help others who are battling as you are
.

A young male sufferer wrote:

This was painful to read because I know how difficult it is to speak about having an illness like anorexia—I've told only one person since my relationship with food broke down and I lost control of my life. Although our stories are totally different, I felt the words you used were the ones I would if I wasn't still so petrified
.

These messages provoked different emotions in me; a weird jumble of positives and negatives. I felt awed that my article had encouraged people to talk about anorexia—a father and daughter broaching the subject for the first time, say—but then I felt panicky that I'd uncovered something I wasn't qualified to follow up on. (It reminded me of being a child and throwing an egg out of a very high window, then looking out to see a furious car-driver below.)

I felt responsible. These were real people's lives: young men who'd never spoken about it, children whose parents were sick with worry. To use the word “anorexia,” to admit to problems, is important of course, but it opens a can of worms . . . My intention had been to document my
own
experience, and yet people seemed to relate to it. That was a good lesson for me, early on, in the power of the printed word: I've learned to be careful—still honest, I hope, but careful—about what I write.

A woman emailed:

Your story is so similar yet so different to my own . . . I am thirty-three years old and my ultimate goal is to have a family. My husband has said very similar things [as] your boyfriend. I came out of rehab a year ago this week with the goal of being at a healthy weight and possibly pregnant by the end of this year. Sadly I am actually now in a worse situation and enough is enough
.

A younger woman said:

I'm twenty years old and have been battling with eating disorder (ED) thoughts for as long as I can remember. In March of this year I was finally diagnosed with anorexia and I have been in hospital ever since. I am now a day patient and will be discharged from hospital in two weeks' time. Even now, I am far from recovered.
My mind still tortures me for every mouthful I allow myself to eat and I continue to hurt my family and friends by being incapable of letting go of the ED altogether. I feel selfish and weak but am trapped in a vicious circle. I do know, however, that people with EDs are extremely determined and that if we fight we can beat the anorexia. Thank you for your column. I hope people who don't understand the illness will read it. Good luck. Don't give in. You will have the family you want and deserve
.

Reading those messages I was reminded of how fortunate I'd been, avoiding hospitals and rehabilitation clinics. Anorexia can get a lot more severe than mine. (Am I a fraud?)

A middle-aged woman emailed:

I read your article and cried. I'm a forty-three-year-old mother of two beautiful girls aged eight and six. Daily I hate myself for being so selfish as to “put anorexia” before everything else but as you know, it is a vicious, horrible disease. I would never have chosen to be ill with anorexia in a million years. However I am now on the very slow path to recovery
.

Another woman wrote:

This is like reading my life on a page. The Oxford exams struggled through, the social meals lost, the addiction to starvation persevering all the while . . . you're right that every day spent this way is a waste. One day I am scared I will look back and realize that my one and only chance at life has slipped through my fingers. By then it will be too late. I am a stuck record, in the grip of a voice that has become so familiar, I no longer know where it ends and mine begins. Or even if they are different at all. I have got to do the same things as you; your challenge is mine. Impromptu
eating, not jumping out of bed onto the treadmill, following rules that will help rather than hurt me now. It feels both slightly odd and a comfort to recognize doppelgänger thoughts in another woman. Eating is what it takes, but it's harder than all the other therapies put together. In itself it's the medicine. I'll eat if you can
.

That really got me:
I'll eat if you can
.

A middle-aged female general practitioner wrote:

I wish you all the best. I am impressed you are sticking to this so admirably and I'm trying to be as strong as you are. Your column is taped to my freezer and helps me force open the door, actually remove food, and even eat it! Keep going, we are stronger than this and surely must have so much to gain. I am keeping my fingers crossed for you—and all of us trying
.