Moyespace

"I'm not fat; I've never been fat. But ever since then, there has been a monster in my brain that tells me I am—that convinces me my clothes don't fit or that I've eaten too much. At times it has forced me to starve myself, to run extra miles, to abuse my body."

This is what Zosia Mamet wrote in her latest column in Glamour magazine. After suffering for years without anyone knowing about her eating disorder, she's finally opened up about her battle to control it.

I read that quote from her column a few days ago. I've been replaying it over and over in my head ever since. It's as if someone has finally said something that's clicked in my head and made sense. I've never had an eating disorder, or really come close to having one, but I do "live in that gray area of food control issues."

I grew up in a family who generally ate really well. We had the odd takeaway and meal out, but my parents never allowed us to eat a lot of junk food and we were never given huge portions. I was also a dancer, so I was really active. I guess I also had good genes so there was never a time when I was considered to be close to overweight.

I don't know when I started to hate my body. I feel like it's just always been something that's been there. I can't remember there ever being a time when I've looked in the mirror and been happy. It doesn't matter if people tell me I look good either because I always just assume they're saying it to be nice. It's as if my brains doesn't believe anyone would actually think that, so it just dismisses any nice comment it hears.

As times this obsession I have has lead me to cut down what i'm eating and pushed me to go running a lot more than I need to. My habits are also very much controlled by my emotions. When the only serious relationship I've been in broke down a few years ago, I pretty much stopped eating altogether and the weight just dropped off me. The fact I wasn't fat to begin with meant that I lost weight that I didn't need to lose. Somehow I'd managed to convince myself that he would like me again if I was thinner, as if that was the reason why things had ended in the first place. 

Of course it wasn't. It wasn't anything to do with that at all. But even though I know that, I still seem to carry around these thoughts that being thinner equals being loved. I look back at all the people I've fancied since I was 16 years old and they couldn't be more different. There have been tall ones, short ones, thin ones, rounder ones, ones with long hair and ones with no hair at all. Yet I seem to be under some illusion that the male species are only interested in thin women. 

Right now, I'm the smallest I've ever been. I'm generally one of the smallest people in my groups of friends, yet I still have major issues accepting how I look. I was in  Topshop a few days ago to try on some new clothes for a party that's coming up at the end of the month. I put on the sequin skirt I'd fallen in love with on the hanger, and it was clear for anyone to see that it was too big. I haven't only lost a few pounds lately, but I've dropped a dress size too. As I tried on the other clothes I'd taken in to the dressing room, the size 8 dresses were also too big. Yet I still stood looking in the mirror attacking what i saw while I was changing, and feeling guilty about being hungry.

The most frustrating thing of all is that people quite often brush of my body concerns. It's as if some people think that you can't have serious body issues because you're not overweight or have an proper eating disorder. But some of us do. We worry that we're eating too much. We worry that we're not doing enough exercise. And we worry about what other people see when they look at us. 

Zosia said in her column that she wants people to start talking about these issues. Well that's what I thought i'd do. There might not be a name for my eating issues, but I definitely have some of my own. So maybe it is time we all started talking about it in order to try and accept ourselves more or to help those who are struggling in silence.

If you want to read Zosia's full column it's here - http://www.glamour.com/health-fitness/2014/08/zosia-mamet-opens-up-about-her-eating-disorder