Abigail Barrett and Lucy Booth arrived at York as neighbours in James College. Before coming to university, they both had a history of disordered eating, and struggled to navigate the change of starting University. Two years on, they’re still flatmates, but also the incumbent President and Treasurer of BEAT society, promoting awareness of eating disorders and fostering a growing community on campus.
Abigail and Lucy opened up to me about their personal experiences with disordered eating and how this has impacted their time at University. Having unrestricted autonomy over your diet can be daunting for those who have a difficult relationship with food. Abigail tells me that “at home you always have someone checking in on you and seeing you eat but it is much more independent when you get to university.”
The transition of moving to a new city, feeling estranged from your family and dealing with an overwhelming workload can induce a lot of stress, causing old eating habits to creep up again, even if someone has recovered.
Lucy says: “During uni, I struggled quite a lot with eating, especially when I was going through a stressful situation. It’s a bit of a control thing.
“Sometimes it would just be so much easier to skip a meal because I was so stressed that I didn’t have an appetite. And then my health hit a bit of a crisis point and it was sort of a wake-up shock that my body needed quite a bit more food to function than I was eating.”
On their Instagram, BEATSoc posts useful advice on how to cope with the transition to university life. They advise people to “make sure you have easy snacks and meals at the ready for Welcome Week” and encourage those in recovery to “surround yourself with people that you feel comfortable with.”
BEAT is the UK’s eating disorder charity which supports people suffering from eating disorders and offers online support. They estimate that approximately 1.25 million people in the UK struggle with an eating disorder and a significant portion of these people are between the ages of 18-25.
In April 2022, the UK government launched new legislation ruling that cafes, restaurants and takeaways with over 250 employees legally had to display the calorie information of non-prepacked food and soft drinks. This was passed in spite of public concern from eating disorder charities that doing so would be at the risk of people with eating disorders, for whom calorie counting can be a very dangerous fixation.
“The uproar from the community was just like ‘why would you do that?’” Abigail tells me.
Forcing menus to display the calorie count can prevent students with eating disorders from participating in some social activities. Some larger restaurants offer menus without the calories, but a lot of smaller restaurants don’t, and this can be another stumbling block which makes it harder for students with eating disorders to get involved in university life.
There are still ways around these obstacles. On request, some larger restaurants offer menus without calories written on them, and many independent cafes (including some here in York, such as Plush!) aren’t obliged to put calories on their menus whatsoever, so the alternatives are there for those navigating recovery and reducing anxiety around eating.
Before coming to university, Abigail was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa. Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder and a full recovery often takes years of treatment.
“Because I was under 18, I went to CAMHS (Child & Adolescent Mental Health Services),” she tells me, “so I was kind of forced into recovery…I’d go every week and they would weigh me, do blood pressure and that. Because I had anorexia, their goal was making sure I was at a healthy weight, and that my blood pressure was fine and my heart was fine, so I didn’t really get any sort of therapy. I didn’t really talk about the mental side of it, it was very much focussed on the physical, even though it’s a mental illness, which wasn’t great.”
“I was just scared that people were going to try and help and…I was like ‘no, I need that’, but then you have the other side of your head which is like ‘no no no, we don’t need help.’”
Eating disorders are severe mental illnesses which affect people of all ages, sex, ethnicities, and backgrounds. There are several different types of eating disorders and some are less well known than others.
“For Awareness Week last year, it was about ARFID, which is Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder. So that’s about nothing to do with body image, but…sensory issues with food,” Abigail says.
“It gets ignored and discredited so easily as someone being fussy when it’s really a sensory issue,” Lucy adds.
A survey of over 200 students with eating disorders found that 32% were diagnosed after starting their course. Almost a fifth (18%) said that their condition had forced them to drop out of their degree course. Another 39% had to take a break from their studies.
Many GP services rely on a BMI system to qualify and get support.
“A lot of people aren’t able to access help at the moment because if their BMI (which is stupid), is deemed as normal, they’re just like ‘oh you’re not sick enough’” Abigail says, “…it’s not about [the] body; it never is. And that’s what’s wrong with how people are being helped from GPs.”
There are several professional support channels for people who are struggling or know someone else who is struggling with an eating disorder. The University of York’s Open Doors services offers free advice for people who are struggling, who can give out mental health support and check-ins as often as you want. The charity BEAT’s crisis team can offer support at all times of the day.
I asked them why it can be so hard for people with eating disorders to reach out for help.
Abigail said: “You can feel a lot of guilt with things like eating disorders. Not to generalise, but you can feel extremely guilty and extremely ashamed of it and you don’t want to tell people because you’re embarrassed, and then again with anorexia, for me anyway it was like I didn’t want to tell people because in my head I was fine […] and if you tell people you’re worried they’re going to want [to] help you, and that’s the thing that your eating disorder doesn’t want you to do.
“In my head, I was just scared that people were going to try and help and…I was like ‘no, I need that’, but then you have the other side of your head which is like ‘no no no, we don’t need help.’”
Lucy says: “you just feel like you’ve got so many other things going on in your life at the same time that it almost goes on the backburner where you’re like, if someone did come up and try [to] help you, you’d want to talk about the situations that are causing it [instead].”
“You can never tell by [their] body if someone [has] an eating disorder, I think that’s the main takeaway,” Lucy says.
If you’re struggling or are worried about someone, you can contact BEAT’s helpline at 0808 801 0677 (England), 0808 801 0432 (Scotland), 0808 801 0433 (Wales), 0808 801 0434 (Northern Ireland), or visit their website https://www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/.