A nutritionist who used to live with a crippling eating disorder says she initially didn't get the help she needed because she "wasn't thin enough."
Lyndi Cohen, from Australia, first became aware of her weight when she was just five years old, and began to believe she was bigger than other children her age.
Writing for news.com.au, she recalled being in ballet class and wearing a pink leotard, while comparing her body to other kids in class.
As she recalled "feeling fat" in her own skin, Lyndi said the perception she had of herself continued as she got older, and she still worried about her weight when she reached 11 years old.
"By now, I’d been told enough times, you’d be so pretty if you lost weight that I believed it," she wrote.
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At a young age, Lyndi was taken to see a nutritionist who put her on a meal plan - despite her weight being within the healthy BMI category.
After she was given the meal plan, 11-year-old Lyndi began calorie counting on a restrictive diet, weighing what she ate and strictly controlling her portions.
Lyndi recalled monthly weigh-ins which put her body "under constant surveillance" - and if she put on weight, she'd be "distraught."
The pressure she was under to be thin caused Lyndi to binge eat, which made her gain weight quickly.
She wrote: "By now my relationship with food was completely disordered. And I just wanted to feel normal around food again, instead of secretly binging on bowls of cereal, loaves of bread or peanut butter by the spoonful."
She would avoid social events where she couldn't weigh her food and weighed herself several times a day.
Dreading a weigh-in with the nutritionist, Lyndi once went to the extreme measure of cutting off her hair so the scales wouldn't go up as much.
As she became more and more obsessed with weight, she also walked an hour to school and back, before exercising more when she got home.
However, she argues no one thought she had a problem with eating "because I wasn't thin."
Continuing to see nutritionists throughout her teenage years, Lyndi said she didn't realise she had a problem until she was trying on a dress for her friend's 21st birthday party and didn't recognise what she saw in the mirror.
Recalling "hating herself" she described going to the doctor immediately to explain her "unhinged" relationship with food.
After spilling out her worries, Lyndi was put on anti-anxiety medication.
She wrote: "I knew my attitude towards food had become unhealthy, but was told by a health professional that the number on the scales meant I didn’t have a problem. I was too fat to have an eating disorder."
Lyndi added the stigma around her weight meant her unhealthy eating habits were "dismissed."
Now working to educate people about eating disorders, she notes that they "can apply to people at any size" and those suffering who happens to weigh more are at risk because society tells people who aren't stick-thin they need to be "fixed."
She has launched a Back to Basics app that aims to help people with healthy eating in a way that removes the "stress."
On her own journey, Lyndi saw a therapist who helped her overcome the "guilt and shame" she had around eating.
She now says she eats when she's hungry rather than as a response to feeling a strong emotion - which "tastes better than 'thin' can ever feel."
If you're struggling with an eating disorder, you can contact eating disorder charity Beat for help and support
