Bank Holiday weekend and I’m in Lidl. I can never think of anything I want to buy, so I wander aimlessly with a basket, ending up with dog food, a grapefruit, fizzy water, apples.
There’s no holiday weekend splurge for me, no BBQ food, salty snacks or sweet treats.
Standing in line for the tills behind a family with two groaning trolleys, I say, out loud: ‘How can you possibly eat all that?’ Because food is still anathema to me. The common belief is that anorexia is a young woman’s disease. You either tragically die or, given time, you come to your senses.
What people rarely consider is what happens when you don’t recover. Those of us who were raised in the 1960s and 1970s, an era of Twiggy and Nimble bread, calorie-counters and One-Cal fizzy drinks, are now reaching retirement age and beyond — and many of us still struggle with eating disorders.
‘Those of us who were raised in the 1960s and 1970s, an era of Twiggy and Nimble bread, calorie-counters and One-Cal fizzy drinks, are now reaching retirement age and beyond — and many of us still struggle with eating disorders,’ writes Liz Jones
Liz Jones at age 20, when she was obsessed with the etiolated models in the magazines: Honey, Petticoat, 19 and, later, Vogue and ELLE
I might work, be fit enough to walk my dogs at speed for an hour twice a day and muck out my horses, but at 65 I remain an anorexic — as I have been since the age of 11.
I’ve had periods (rarely menstrual ones, obviously) of normality when life was going well. But I would always know what I ate today, and what I will eat tomorrow.
During times of stress, my instinct is not to eat. Over the past few months, for example, life has been so stressful (buying a house, a relationship break-up, grief) that food makes me gag. I’m hungry, but faced with food I push it away.
It’s the one thing I can control. I managed an apple the other day and my jaw actually hurt, so unused is it to the action of chewing.
The total number of those who have an eating disorder in the UK is estimated at 1.25 million, though it’s difficult to know how many of them are older anorexics.
With no concerned parents or teachers pushing us to get better, we are a largely hidden cohort, so it’s hard to find statistics.
But what information there is suggests a growing trend.
The Health Survey for England 2019: Eating Disorders report found 19 per cent of adult women and 13 per cent of adult men screened positive for a possible eating disorder, compared to just 6 per cent of women and men in 2007.
And the following figures from UK eating disorders charity Beat are shocking: ‘In 2000, 162 people over the age of 60 were hospitalised with an eating disorder. In 2021 that number had risen to 1,493.’
The effects are potentially devastating. According to Australian research carried out in 2021, ‘the risk of mortality and morbidity in [the over-55s] is significantly higher.
‘Therefore, the timely recognition of eating disorders among older age groups appears to be of greater importance’.
Certainly, I hear from older sufferers worryingly often.
Aged 21, Liz was admitted to London’s St Bart’s hospital for treatment where she had to stay in bed and eat three meals a day for three months
One reader from Ealing, West London, wrote: ‘I am an 80-year-old anorexic. I love to watch anything to do with cooking and baking, all to no avail. My appetite craves these luxuries but my mind does not agree — so we tussle away.
‘I devour what I think will be great only to be disappointed and go back to my diet of yoghurt, fruit (sparingly) and boiled sweets.’
Another, a fifty-something I first met in mental health hospital The Priory more than 20 years ago, when I went to interview her for a feature, shared the devastating impact anorexia has had on her life.
She still lives with her parents, despite having an MA she has never been well enough to work, and now tells me she has broken her arm (she has prematurely brittle bones).
A couple of years ago, I interviewed another sufferer, Sophie, then in her late 60s. She died soon after. It’s not just the young who lose their lives.
My own eating disorder started when I was 11. A shy, nervous child, I felt constant butterflies in my stomach, and stopped eating as I didn’t want to feed them; I wanted to be ready for fight or flight.
I was also repulsed by the prospect of puberty, and anorexia ensured I had only one or two periods, aged 18 and 19.
I became obsessed with the etiolated models in the magazines my older sisters brought home: Honey, Petticoat, 19 and, later, Vogue and ELLE. The only fat woman I saw was Hattie Jacques, in endless Carry On films. I remember thinking: ‘How can she possibly laugh, being that size?’
Aged 21, I was admitted to London’s St Bart’s hospital for treatment. There was no specialist ward, no sympathy. I just had to stay in bed and eat three meals a day for three months. I swore I’d never return.
I never did, but the effects of being constantly underweight can be debilitating, often invisible until too late.
Last year, I underwent a bone density scan that revealed signs of osteoporosis — where your bones resemble an Aero chocolate bar, something I’ve never eaten — in my spine. This was the result of decades of under-eating and a diet lacking in calcium.
Some 19 per cent of adult women and 13 per cent of adult men screened positive for a possible eating disorder, compared to just 6 per cent of women and men in 2007. Pictured: Liz Jones
Liz’s eating disorder started when she was 11. A shy, nervous child, she felt constant butterflies in my stomach, and stopped eating as she didn’t want to feed them. Pictured age five
Crucially, after a battery of tests (including sessions with a psychiatrist, blood and urine tests, and scans of all the major organs), the doctors found the cause of my lifelong anxiety: a lack of nutrients, notably B12, D, iron and protein, and minerals including magnesium. (They also discovered the reason I wake every night at 3am: my body is hungry.)
In what is a vicious cycle, anorexia — a mental illness — has been contributing to my other problems: nervousness and depression.
When I was a girl, I hid my eating disorder by never getting naked in the shower after hockey and hiding my emaciated body in baggy clothes. Now I live alone, there’s nobody to monitor what I eat — or don’t.
When I’m in restaurants, I cannot tell you the endless sighs I’ve received from waiters when they remove a plate of food I’ve hardly touched.
But these days, I’m past caring what people think.
And, yes, not eating has led to fights with partners who lose patience with my seemingly ungrateful addiction. (It means I’m a cheap date, though I currently owe Octopus Energy £10,000; I’m always cold.)
Anecdotally, loneliness among women like me is common.
The generations chatting and laughing over a feast under a Tuscan pergola is something we rarely experience. This is not only because — and I speak from experience — old anorexics make horrendous spouses as we’re so rigid, fearful you might have cooked something in butter or added chocolate to a chilli dish, but we’re also less likely to have children and therefore grandchildren.
My own experience is typical; because of my eating disorder, my weight was so low I was incapable of ovulating.
Liz Jones age 17. Decades later, she still finds the idea of being fat repulsive, often having nightmares where she’s developed hips
But even if I had been able to conceive, the prospect of not being in control of my body shape during pregnancy terrified me.
Not having children might be a blessing, though.
I know two women, aged 65 and 68, with lifelong eating issues who did manage to have children. One vicariously overfed the child, baking elaborate cakes she never touched herself; the other managed to infect her son with her fear of food. I remember him saying to me, aged ten: ‘Are my thighs too fat?’
It took him until his 20s to escape her eagle eye and eat normally. Another, in her late 50s, has a daughter who is overweight, who tells me it was seeing her mother live such a miserable existence, counting calories, that made her want to eat out of spite.
We are less likely to have a vibrant social life, too. No one likes us.
My friend with the broken arm was ‘strongly encouraged’ not to attend her brother’s wedding; her family felt her emaciated frame would be a distraction.
If she were disabled and in a wheelchair, a red carpet would have been rolled out, but the message here was: Don’t embarrass us!
In my case, it’s usually along the lines of: ‘Oh we didn’t invite you to the barbecue as we know you won’t eat.’
When it comes to curing eating disorders, unlike obesity, where people are considered prey to the wicked food industry, the skinny flipside of the coin is supposedly easily fixed. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been told: ‘Why don’t you just eat something?’
At a party, as I recoiled from a canapé, a man actually said to me: ‘It’s not Kryptonite!’
But you’d never dare say ‘Why don’t you just eat less?’ to someone who is overweight.
In a world of body-positive messaging there is, rightly, increasing sympathy for the obese as victims, seeing compulsive eating as an addiction to be cured.
But if you have an eating disorder on the opposite side of the scale, especially if you’re older and presumably wiser, less impressionable, you are not perceived as a ‘victim’ needing help, but as stupid, frivolous and vain.
Surely, people assume, at this age you are long past having body image issues.
Consequently, what women like me feel most is shame for not having grown out of a supposedly ‘teenage’ disorder.
And with most of the post-menopausal female population worried about weight gain, there is little sympathy for those of us who are underweight.
No one cares that you take no pleasure in life. People say: ‘Oh, you can wear anything! Yay!’
A fifty-something friend who is obese has a weight management team who monitor her weekly for a year; the shakes and soups couriered to her home cost the NHS £1,200 per patient.
Help is hard to come by for those with eating disorders including anorexia and often a postcode lottery. Pictured: Liz Jones
But help is hard to come by for those with eating disorders including anorexia, according to Beat, and often a postcode lottery.
A 2019 report for the charity highlighted that there were ‘alarming discrepancies in access to specialist treatment, waiting times and staffing levels at adult eating disorder services in England’, with only around a quarter of adults starting treatment within four weeks.
A friend who was sectioned — her ancient parents didn’t know where else to turn — tells me that during Covid, she and her fellow inmates were simply tipped out from the eating disorders ward, and sent home with no support at all.
Over the years, I’ve had decades when I have been in therapy (counselling, neurofeedback, hypnotherapy, neuro-linguistic programming, eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing) but that has been to alleviate my acute anxiety (nothing worked).
I’ve never asked a therapist to help me increase my appetite because I’d be terrified of a cure.
And therein lies the crux of the problem. Do I want to change, or is it way too late? I don’t know the answer to that.
Rationally, I know I’m not fulfilled or happy. I watch MasterChef, or see a family out for lunch, and I envy the pleasure people take from food.
But even now, I find the idea of being fat repulsive; I often have nightmares where I’ve developed hips, a spare tyre. I’m pleased when a sample size 8 still fits me.
There are no miracle drugs — such as Saxenda and Wegovy to help the obese lose weight — and if there were, I’d struggle to take them. (I dispute recent reports saying anorexics are using these jabs; we don’t need them, our determination to starve is too strong.) Being anorexic also makes you think you are better than everyone else: I’m not destroying the rainforest by eating meat! I haven’t created more humans!
The fact so many once curvy role models — Adele, Rebel Wilson, Oprah — have shrunk, as though placed in a hot wash, makes my anorexic brain wonder if women still envy skinny, despite the body-positivity movement. Whether I am right to be thin, after all?
Seriously, though, why would you want to be someone like me, never knowing what it’s like to be truly satiated, never to know the pleasure of olive oil, pasta, risotto or even an ice cream on a hot day.
Nothing is rational about an anorexic’s food choices. We are divorced from what it is to be hungry, what it means to be full. And at this stage of our lives, when we should be sorted, that is a tragedy.
Both extremes of the eating disorder spectrum are awful. But in our society today, both are not given equal weight.
- beateatingdisorders.org.uk
