NEDAwareness Week

NEDAwareness Week 2010: February 21-27
Theme: It's Time to Talk About It

As some of you may know, I struggled with an eating disorder for a long time, aged 16-23 and although I class myself as recovered now I do still have bad days. The illness has had a huge impact on my life and will probably be present, but in a controlled way for the rest of my life. Eating disorder awareness is really important to me. It is misunderstood by so many, even many doctors. Many of the doctors I have seen in the past have had no idea what to do with someone with an eating disorder, the most memorable was one telling me that I didn't need to look like Kate Moss so just start eating properly... So I would just like to dedicate a quick post to the National Eating Disorders Awareness Week.

Taken from the website;
2010 Theme: It’s Time to Talk About It
This year the National Eating Disorders Association is stressing that it’s time to talk about eating disorders. We live in a culture saturated with unrealistic body-image messages and almost all of us know somebody struggling with an eating disorder. Because this is true, we urge you to talk about it......and do just one thing during NEDAwareness Week to 1) raise awareness that eating disorders are serious illnesses, not lifestyle choices; 2) provide accurate information to medical, educational and/or business communities, and 3) direct people to information and resources about eating disorders.

They also raise three key points,
1) Eating disorders are illnesses, not lifestyle choices
2) Prevention, education and access to care are critical
3) Help is available and recovery is possibly

More on these points is available here and the NEDA homepage is here

British websites
B-eat
B-eat for young people
Seed - the self help group and charity which helped me

If you are reading this and you're struggling with an eating disorder, there are lots of helpful websites out there. There are also lots of self help groups, through the British group BEAT you can use a search function to locate one near you.

There are also many communities on facebook and myspace which are recovery focussed which I've found helpful in the past.

If anyone has any questions feel free to ask.