I first made contact with Caring Whispers in April 2008 with regard to my daughter, Emma, who was suffering from anorexia. I had seen several NHS doctors regarding her eating but was only offered blood tests. Emma’s weight had slowly gone down over a year and wasn’t easy to monitor.
With Caring Whispers she started to receive one to one counselling with Sue Hind on a weekly basis. She was asked to write her food and mood diaries which were then taken the following week to her next appointment where they were monitored. After each of the hourly sessions Sue would let me know Emma’s progress and targets. I could also discuss any queries with her and any problems I was having.
Slowly Emma started to gain weight and, with Sue, managed to face the things which had caused the anorexia. Progress was slow but steady. During her recovery process we also had family sessions where Emma could talk to us with the support of the two Sues. Some things she said hurt but we were able to discuss them and understand her point of view. We were also able to get across our point of view to Emma.
Whilst Emma was having support for her anorexia, Grant got support for his obesity. He has tried on several occasions to lose weight but invariably put it back on again. With the help and support of Sue Gardner he has now lost four stone and has changed his lifestyle.
The journey we have been on as a family has not been an easy one but we have had the support of Caring Whispers throughout. Because of their support for us, Grant and I have decided to become volunteers and now help the charity in any way we can. Without their help and support I dread to think what would have happened.
We owe so much to the EDN team and without their support, guidance and belief I’m scared to think where we would have been now. There is still a long way to go but we are confident that with the ongoing support of Sue Gardner and her team that we will both reach our goals and finally enjoy happy and healthy lifestyle.
Emma's Story
For the past few years my aim has been to lose weight, be as thin as I could possibly be. I thought being thin would make me happier. Thought my boyfriend would love me more. I would look better and people would look at me as a better person. However I was wrong, all I was doing was causing pain to the people around me. My mum and dad, close family and friends could only worry about me but not change my way of thinking.
Then I met Sue H, my councilor. Thanks to Sue things could not be better for me now. I have so much more confidence, energy and a better outlook on life. Without Sue I might not be here now and I cannot thank her enough.
Caring Whispers have not only helped me but my dad as well. He was at the other end of the scale, obese. Since seeing Sue G he has lost over 4 stone and is still loosing. I am so proud of him and grateful to Sue.
Grant's Story
I’m forty years of age, work as a fleet contract manager and live with my wife, Christine, 48, an accounts administrator, in Heysham near
Lancaster
. We have one daughter, Emma, who is fifteen.
“One of the most defining moments for me was hearing Emma remember a comment I'd made returning home from a BUPA health screening for my job, about four years ago. I’ve developed this persona as a big, jovial chap who laughs at everything. Jokingly, I said to my wife and daughter, ‘Apparently I might be dead by fifty if I carry on at this size.’ Emma burst into tears when she was telling me this at a family counselling meeting, and I suddenly realized the hell I was putting my family through. I could no longer deny there was anything wrong with my weight.
I’ve always been big – I was ten stone at the age of twelve, and both my father and grandfather were very overweight. I’m six foot one, and the weight is fairly evenly distributed as I don’t have a massive stomach, so I felt I could carry it off. But taking part in the therapy over the past five months with the Eating Disorders Charity, ‘Caring Whispers’, based in Morecambe, has made me face up to my demons. I now understand why I have eaten so much all my life. My mother died when I was just five, and my father sold our house and we went to live with his parents. They were very prim, very Victorian, and there was no affection. Nobody hugged me. I was a lonely little boy, and at mealtimes my grandmother, who cooked very stodgy traditional food, always with a pudding, sternly insisted I eat up everything on my plate. I’d also gorge on fatty snacks like crisps and chocolate – food became my comfort, feeling full up my way of feeling loved. As a teenager, I wasn’t fat as I played so much competitive sport, mainly basketball and football. But once I started work, in the contract food industry, I didn’t have the time to exercise and spent long hours driving, when I’d be grazing continually. I now realize that at any sign of mental pressure, I would turn to food. It was simply greed, and lack of security, and anything stressful would trigger a food binge. When I met Christine I was around fourteen stone – quite big, but not obese. But then my job became more and more stressful, and I turned increasingly to food. I hid my bingeing from Christine – I’d stop off at a garage on the way home and eat three chocolate bars. I love food and wine, and at the weekends I would make the family meals – but I’d eat almost an entire meal in the preparation. Then I’d sit down with what looked like a normal portion, and I used to say, ‘How come I am so big when I eat normally?’ Never mind the fact I’d already eaten another meal secretly. I didn’t crave sweets or cakes – I love savoury foods, and adore fresh bread. I could easily eat an entire loaf.
When Emma was born we were both thrilled. To me, here was the child I would lavish with everything I had never had. We are so close, Emma and I, incredibly tactile as we were always hugging and cuddling. But once she became a teenager that started to change. She got a boyfriend, and I didn't like it – I felt as if I was losing her, and her grades began to dip at school. She used to spend ages in her bedroom alone with him, and even ate her meals up there. I think I might have smothered her a bit – I wanted to be with her all the time, and made sure my weight didn’t stop us swimming together, playing and running about in the park, when she was a child. Then, I don’t think she even noticed my weight, but once she hit her teenage years, it became a different matter. Not only did she start to withdraw from me, she became much more critical.
With Christine, she’d say, ‘Please, dad. We’re really worried about you. You keep getting breathless. It isn’t healthy to be so fat.” In my arrogance of denying I had a problem, I didn’t even notice the fact that Emma was beginning to pick at her food. It really hit me last year, when we were on holiday in
Egypt
. We’d taken her friend Emily with us, and it always used to be Emily who was the skinny one. Then I saw Emma from the back, sitting in her bikini with her legs in the swimming pool. You could count every notch of her spine, as her bone definition was terrifying. As the dad of a teenage girl you don’t often see them without clothes. I was horrified, but even then I didn’t make the link – I couldn’t see that my obesity had affected her relationship with food. I had tried to diet in the past – crazy diets consisting of eating just cottage cheese and once I managed to lose two stone, but, as I said to Christine, I couldn’t live like that. At my heaviest, I could barely struggle through the day. I was exhausted all the time, and I’d get home from work late at ten, eat a heavy meal, and then fall into bed.
Christine had been trying to get help from our GP for Emma, but had been told, quite literally, that she wasn’t dangerously skinny enough to get help on the NHS. We would have to pay for an eating disorder clinic, and the prices were prohibitive. But, thanks to her tenacity, she got Emma into ‘Caring Whispers’ run by the Eating Disorders Charity, and it was there I met the Chief Executive, Sue Gardner, who suggested I might like some counseling. I was astonished at first, but slowly it dawned on me that Emma’s problem was linked to mine.
Finally, I had to face up to my demons and stop denying I had a problem. Sue made me keep a ‘Food and Mood’ diary, and for the first time I realized how much I relied on food to take away my worries. It wasn’t about the food, it was about my own insecurity. There was no miracle diet, just healthy eating of vegetables and protein, cutting down on the carbohydrates and, most important of all, introducing me to a personal trainer, Matt, who gives me two one-hour sessions a week. I absolutely love it, running and going to the gym. I have been losing between two to three pounds a week, and am now below nineteen stone, with a target weight of seventeen stone. I don’t stand on the scales obsessively, I can just tell by how my clothes fit. I’ve thrown out all the ‘fat’ clothes, and that was such a thrill. Before, XXL didn’t even fit me. I’m eating breakfast for the first time in my life, and a healthy lunch, then a family meal, not too late in the evening. I made a bargain with Emma - for every pound she put on, I would try to lose four.
Emma is so proud of me, and I am so proud of her too, for the way she has fought her anorexia. I didn’t think of myself as a selfish person, but I can now see that I have been utterly selfish. I thought I was giving her everything as a father, but all I was doing was making her anxious. I’m about to start playing five-aside football, and I can take up squash again.
