About me

For a long period of time I was embarrassed about my past. But I have realised that to progress, I have to fully accept my condition and so now the skeleton’s out of the closet.

My story is a classic case of the double edged sword of the internet. It all started with an innocuous intention of baking a cake for my friend’s birthday. A girl who had hardly opened the oven before, I trawled the internet for recipes. In the process, I was introduced to sites such as Calorie Count, Calorie King, Nutrition Data, as well as food blogs. I became educated on nutrition; I became obsessed with nutrition. I was abhorred by the junk in my diet. I used to eat at MacDonalds every week with my best friend; after the “discovery,” I couldn’t bring myself to step into Macs. This was in June 2006, when I was just 16 years old.

The irony of it all is that I was underweight. I have been underweight my entire life and when the adopted “pure” diet (a.k.a. no junk food, no snacks) mnaifest itself physically, I was literally a walking skeleton. But my eyes didn’t see the destruction; I believed that by eating heatlhy, I was healthy.

Of course my mum noticed. After my O Levels, she brought me to see a GP who referred me to a specialist at the hospital. In December 2006, I was oficially diagnosed wiht anorexia, and hospitalized for 3 weeks. 3 hellish weeks. Although it was supposed to aid recovery, it was a futile attempt because in my heart I vehemently denied that I harboured an ED. Moreover, what I witnessed in the wards (people sneaking food, overexercising, tricks of ED) was feeding my ED rather than helping it. It was a descent into the most abominable depths of my lfe.

Now, it’s year 2010. What have I been doing for the past 3 years of my life? It took about a year to accept that I had an ED, another year to know that I had an ED but do nothing about it, and in 2009, I started working on recovery, made much progress mentally but not physically. I started this blog sometime in October 2009 not only to chronicle my life/thoughts/recovery, but also to meet and make new friends, to join and contribute to this very supportive community.

Although ED has robbed me quite a bit of my health (osteopenia) and social life, I have learnt so many things in the process of recovery amongst which are confidence, trust, accepting uncertainty, true friendship and real food, that I would not change my past even if I had a choice.

And if you couldn’t tell from my blog name, I am an oatmeal fiend!

Any lingering questions? Email me at sab-06@hotmail.com!