Author Louise O’Neill has opened up on her battle with anorexia and called for people to not be so quick to applaud weight loss.
The best-selling writer, who penned Asking For It and After The Silence, recently marked four years in recovery from eating disorders and has appealed for others to be more mindful of the condition.
Louise said: “I was 14 when a family member died, my uncle who was 30 at the time.
“It was very traumatic for my entire family and just in the grieving process, I lost quite a lot of weight.
“I often say that if no one had commented on it, I wouldn’t have even noticed.
“I was only 14, I wasn’t a teenager who weighed
myself.There wasn’t conversation in my house around weight.
“People were saying, ‘Oh, you lost weight’ and
there were friends of my parents, adult women, who were telling me I looked great.
“I think it put this thought in my head that, ‘Oh, I musn’t have looked great before’.
“I started firstly with obsessive exercising and then it became restricting my food and then purging my food in order to maintain a weight so low it would have been difficult for me to maintain.
“I would be reluctant to comment on anyone else’s weight loss or gain because particularly with weight loss, which is so celebrated in our society, you don’t know what you’re congratulating someone on.
“You could be congratulating them on grief, illness, trauma or on an eating disorder.
“I wish as a culture that we were less [eager] to pass remarks on people’s weight.”
In her chat with Miriam O’Callaghan on RTE Radio One yesterday, the writer also called for parents to
seek specialised care for kids who are struggling with eating disorders.
Louise said: “I think appropriate care is so important.Eating disorders need specialised care and I can’t emphasise that enough.
“I want anyone listening to know that full recovery is possible and I am living proof for that."
