Former anorexic student urges others to be body confident
A Leeds woman whose aim to get beach-ready spiralled into an eating disorder is sharing her story to help others learn to love their bodies.
A Leeds woman whose aim to get beach-ready spiralled into an eating disorder is sharing her story to help others learn to love their bodies.
Becca Smith, 23, hit rock bottom when she was told if her Body Mass Index (BMI) dropped any lower she would be admitted to hospital. The Leeds Beckett student was warned she was on the verge of a heart attack, thanks to months of endless hours in the gym combined with tiny food portions.
Since then she’s gone on to beat the illness and become a successful body-builder, as well as a full-time personal trainer helping others reach their goals in a healthier way. At the start of Body Image Awareness week, she’s using her experiences to inspire and motivate people to love themselves.
“It was back in my second year of uni and I was going to be working in Spain for the summer for three months,” Becca says.
“All I decided was that I was going to get skinny for the beach. I started exercising vigorously and really watching what I ate. It was then that my friends started getting a bit worried, but I just saw it as they didn’t have the motivation that I did. I just thought ‘I’m not going to stop until I feel good’. After a couple of months I was at my lowest weight of around six stone.
Becca’s parents became worried when they saw photos of her on social media looking dangerously thin, and decided to fly out Spain to check she was alright.
“It was at that point when my mum first saw me and the horror on her face... I think I realised what I’d done to myself,” says Becca.
“I’d fallen into a trap without even realising it.”
Once back in the UK, Becca was referred to an eating disorder clinic in Chester where she’s originally from. She began her recovery after a doctor said she was surprised Becca hadn’t had a heart attack.
Becca says it was difficult to come to terms with the idea that the behaviour she thought was healthy was actually damaging her body – and says it can be hard getting others to understand the complexity of eating disorders: “I remember going on holiday with my family in the middle of my recovery and we needed to get on the plane so we just had to quickly grab a sandwich.
“I just remember being at the counter looking at all these sandwiches trying to find the low calorie ones and my dad rushing me, and I just completely dropped down and had a complete panic attack. I was in an absolute state crying my eyes out. I thought ‘it’s just not normal, I’m freaking out about a sandwich’.
Becca believes social media and the internet have a large part to play in young people feeling bad about the way they look. Through her Instagram page @be_x_fit she gets messages from children as young as 14 telling her they ‘feel rubbish’ and want to lose weight.
“I can’t comprehend that,” she says.
“It’s upsetting. When I was 14 there was no such thing as social media so it didn’t really even come into my head. Nowadays you can find anything you want on the internet.
“ If you want to drop a stone in a week, you can find some kind of crazy diet and you could probably do it. So for young girls nowadays body image is such a huge thing.
“We don’t get taught about nutrition, about body image and how to love ourselves. We don’t get taught how to be in this society and not get dragged into all that craziness of aspiring to look like someone else. We should teach kids that what you see in a magazine isn’t reality.”
Becca now enjoys weight-lifting and is a successful body-building bikini champion, but is keen to make clear that her new ‘obsession’ is a healthy one.
“The photos caused a bit of controversy because people looked at me and I had comments like ‘girls with muscles are awful’,” she says.
“But it’s one day out of the year that I look like that. The rest of the time I really don’t look like that!
“ I enjoy food, I go out on the weekends, I eat whatever I want. Weight training helps me to deal with my eating disorder and help others feel good about themselves.”
Charity BEAT estimates that at least 725,000 men and women in the UK are affected by an eating disorder in some way.
This Body Image Awareness week, a series of activities are being held around Leeds, including a talk from fashion commentator Caryn Franklin MBE.