: My Battle With Anorexia: At 16, I Weighed 33 Kgs Doctors Said I’d Die In 2 Weeks #IndiaNEWS #healthy living Thanks to the media and entertainment industry, eating disorders (ED) are often viewed

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My Battle With Anorexia: At 16, I Weighed 33 Kgs Doctors Said I’d Die In 2 Weeks #IndiaNEWS #healthy living
Thanks to the media and entertainment industry, eating disorders (ED) are often viewed as a problem of the Western world. In India, little discourse around the mental illness exists, despite the fact that ED habits affect between 25% and 40% of adolescent Indian girls. Moreover, EDs are more likely to cause death than any other mental illness, including depression.
Moreover, as Indian women try to cram themselves into the confines of Western beauty standards, the country seems to be ill-equipped to deal with this massive problem. Young women dismiss the serious illness as ‘simple ways to lose weight’, and parents continue to normalise the habit due to ingrained fat-phobia.
There are also common misconceptions that you have to look a certain way to even be considered anorexic, which is what UK-based writer Millie Sansoye was told when she informed her therapist that she might have an ED.
“The therapist said, ‘You can’t have anorexia, because you’re not thin enough’,� Millie recalls in conversation with The Better India. “So I thought I would have to get sicker to get treatment. �
Millie battled severe anorexia for two years as a teenager (Source: Millie Sansoye)
‘It Took Absolute Control Over Me’
In many cases, those suffering from EDs eventually develop severe depression as a result of the illness. But in Millie’s case, things happened the other way round. At the age of 14, she was diagnosed with severe depression as a result of the harrowing bullying she faced in school for being overweight.
To cope with this torment, Millie decided to work on losing weight. “I thought that if I did that, the bullies would leave me alone. I went for it the right way at first — eating healthy and exercising. Over the summer, I dropped a dress size. But the bullying didn’t stop. Clearly, I wasn’t thin enough,� she says.
So she worked harder to lose weight, but after she developed a knee injury that prevented her from going to the gym, she had to find other ways. So she started eating less, and for a while, this seemed to work. “But the depression had altered my thinking. Even as I started reducing the amount of food I was eating, regardless of how many dress sizes I dropped, I was still getting bullied,� she recalls.
“I think that’s when the ED began. There came a point where I’d started feeling guilty for eating anything — never mind a pizza, even if I were eating fruit, I’d be left riddled with guilt. I told my brother, ‘I think I have a problem, because I’ve just eaten an apple and I feel awful, like I’ve killed someone.

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