At the beginning of this year I began my recovery from an ED that controlled my life in 2012. While I was never anorexic, there was certainly a period of time where I was severely underweight and was basically eating myself to continue functioning. It all began in 2011 when I decided I wanted to lose a few kg and began going to the gym and changing my eating habits to slightly healthier ones. This was all very well, until I started to obsess over losing weight and what was in the mirror. I was never overweight, not even in the slightest bit, but I had become so wound up in the idea of being thin. As a young girl I had always loved food, didn’t give a crap what others thought, embraced my curves, and kept very active with dancing and soccer. I was always bubbly, social, and out-going and had a great group of friends around me. It wasn’t until 2011 when this all began to go out the window. I became so wrapped up in restricting my food intake and pushing myself to the limit for hours a day at the gym that I lost who I was and stopped spending time with friends. I avoided going out for dinner and going to parties as I believed I would instantly gain weight and wouldn’t be able to control myself around food. People around me did not see how bad I was getting, and instead were complimenting my new body and asking my for tips and secrets. This of course only pushed me further into my obsession. In 2012, I was meant to go off to university like all my other friends, but instead I decided to take a year off and think about what I wanted to do with my life. I became depressed and lacked a social life, I spiralled further into my eating disorder and ate less and less, as well as continuing to exercise harder and longer. I was unable to concentrate, irritated, fatigued and constantly angry and hostile towards my family. My iron was severely low and my body was feeding off my own muscle. My hair become limp and thin and I was as emaciated as ever. I obsessed over food, calories, recipes etc but ate barely anything. A voice constantly told me I didn’t deserve to eat, food would make me fat, I wasn’t skinny enough, and that if I ate I should feel guilty about it. It wasn’t until the end of 2012 where I had the goal of studying nursing that I began to realise the damage I was doing to my own precious body. I was literally slowly destroying myself. It took me a long few months to put my thoughts to action, but I finally began taking baby steps to eating more normally and gaining some weight. When I moved to Wellington at the beginning of this year I was thrown into a completely new life. At first I stuck to my own familiar habits, over exercising and eating little. But slowly as I became more social, I stopped thinking so much about food and began to relax a little in my routines and habits. Something clicked inside of me about half way through the year, when I suddenly decided, I am not doing this to myself anymore. I began to eat the foods I would have never touched and acted upon the idea of gaining weight. Now, at the end of the year, I have come such a long way since the beginning of the year I can’t even believe it. I don’t know when or how the change in me happened, but it did and I couldn’t be happier about that. I am learning to love my body, and nourish it with the nutrients it needs (as well as the ones it desires!). I have stopped aiming towards being skinny and instead am embracing the curves I was blessed with and focus on being happy, healthy, and content in my own skin. While that ED still sits in the back of my mind, I feel as though every month it is pushed just a little bit further back into my mind and the voice gets quieter and quieter. I know that I will never let myself get to that point again, and my health and well being matters more to me than anything. I want to go on to be an empowering nurse who walks the talk of health promotion. I hope that one day I can go into mental health and help out young girls who go through similar issues to the ones I did. To anyone who is currently going through tough times, I want you to know that you’re not alone and you are beautiful on the inside and out. Keep your friends and family close and talk to them, don’t be afraid to talk to people and get help. I promise you that if you have the will to get better, you will, it doesn’t happen over night but if you take small steps at a time you eventually get to where you want to be… and one day you’ll look back and you just won’t be able to understand why you did that to yourself in the first place. Eating disorders are a major issue in society today, and the amount of media promoting “thinspiration”, getting a “summer body”, clean eating, etc only make it more of an issue. We need to teach people to nourish their bodies, include regular exercise in their lives, and love and accept that we all come in different shapes and sizes rather than idealizing being skinny, exercising all the time, and eating barely anything.