Kylie's story - It's time to talk about it

With the recent publicity in the media about Australia’s largest support organization The Butterfly Foundation to receive funding cuts for its support line….it seems more important than ever that we as Australians and indeed all over the world speak out about how serious this illness really is. For example, 1800 people died from eating disorders in 2012 – more than the road toll in that year. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of all mental illnesses and the average time that a person suffers from an eating disorder is 15 years.

When we first started filming our project it started out as a documentary. I had been in the anorexic state for nearly three years and the pendulum had recently swung rapidly to the state of bingeing. My weight had sky-rocketed…..this was nothing new - I’ve been living like this since I was 15.

I felt desperate….I felt like I was losing my identity as the skinny girl, but I didn’t want to stay sick. I also didn’t want to gain masses of weight - but I had never experienced the “in between”. My emotions were high and the only way I knew how to calm them down was to stifle them with food….and a lot of it.

I kept thinking, WHY AM I DOING THIS??? Why can’t I just eat and enjoy social outings with my loved ones just like everyone else? Is it genetic? Do I literally have a food addiction? Is this my way of staying in control? Has my brain chemistry been trained to crave junk? Am I suppressing a childhood trauma? Should I take anti-depressants? When will this torment ever leave me?????

My name is Kylie and I am on a quest to recover from a 20 year addiction with anorexia combined with binge eating disorder.

In what has been a painful and incredibly secretive history, I have at different times been known to take endless diet pills, exercised like a maniac, eaten like a bird, eaten as though I’d never see food again, abused laxatives, raided a garbage bin, avoided family and friend get-togethers, spent thousands on diet fads, hidden in a cupboard to gorge, stolen food, taken residence in emergency rooms, lied to those closest to me and hated my own guts!

From the time I was fifteen I have either binged or starved. My weight has fluctuated between 86kg in my 20’s, and in 2013 reached an all time low of 45kg. I had not had a female cycle for over two years!

With the incredible support of my partner in 2014 at the age of 38, I decided enough is enough.

Let me get one thing straight however - I had to be ready. I had to be aware and I had to fight for a new way of being.

It is still a struggle, but the world works in wondrous ways. I am finally learning, and with that learning I am sharing, and with that sharing I am living.

No-one deserves to feel the shame or isolation experienced with a full-blown eating disorder. In my case my addiction is food, with others it may be drugs, or alcohol, or gambling, or shopping. There are so many ways we human beings behave to stifle our emotions or fill ourselves up. And we keep it hidden. We judge our self worth by those around us or external measures.

I am not an expert, I am not yet fully recovered, I am most definitely on my way! I’m ready to shout it out, and I’m ready to share every single detail, be it somewhat ugly or full of enlightenment that I find along the way.

I am still learning myself - and I want you all to learn with me. We all deserve peace. Thank you for sharing this journey with me.

We have a great team beside us who are committed to investigating each and every possibility to find some answers. Some will resonate and some will not - some will be challenging and some will offer incredible breakthroughs……but most importantly we will be talking and supporting each other.

No-One is Alone……I promise you that!