Breaking up with Ana

1. You don't have to be severely underweight to be suffering: Untrue to popular belief, you really do not have to be severely and noticeably underweight to have a diagnosis of Anorexia. The media has made it seem that you cannot be Anorexic without looking underweight/ill, and this is just not true. In fact, you can actually be overweight and anorexic.  On top of this, Anorexia is a MENTAL disorder. Weight loss is just one of many symptoms. 2. The services in the UK are crap unless your health is at serious risk The eating disorder service in the UK is horrendous. Although N.I.C.E guidelines CLEARLY state that weight should not be a determining factor for getting treatment, health professionals, more often than not use weight/BMI as the indicator as to whether or not someone should get treatment. This, however, is not entirely their fault. Due to government cuts, it is just not financially possible to get treatment for Anorexia on the NHS. This is leading to people (such as

I realised recently that it has been a long while since I last posted on this blog, despite the promise to myself that I would update it regularly. How annoying. The last few months have been absolutely crazy, filled with many ups and many downs. After my last post, I went on my search for treatment so that I would be able to return to university in April, however, it didn't really go to plan and finding treatment is NOT as easy as I thought it would be. I have been finding out the hard way that within the NHS, and due to my location in the UK, although I have an official diagnosis of AN, and although my BMI is still a lot lower than it should be, I don't qualify for funded treatment. This is due to my BMI not being below 15 (a healthy BMI is between 18.5 and 24.9). A BMI of 15 or below is very dangerous and life threatening, so only qualifying for treatment at that stage seems ridiculous. I could go on and rant about how upsetting and frustrating the whole process of finding