This picture is of Emily Tatford holding a birthday cake to celebrate her 29th birthday. For most of us, a birthday is not a birthday without some cake, but for Emily it was the first time she had had one for 10 years.
Blowing out the candles is a time-honoured tradition before you tuck into your favourite sponge covered in your topping of choice. But for the graduate, it has a whole different meaning and she described eating a slice as "terrifying".
The 29-year-old, from Cardiff, has spent the past 12 years trying to get help for her eating disorders, and eating cake with the help of staff at the day centre she was visiting at the time was a major milestone in her battle.
Now, Emily wants to use her next birthday to use her experience to help others and to raise money for UK eating disorder charity Beat, as a way of thanking them for their support over the past decade.
With help from a group of close friends from their school days at Radyr Comprehensive, she is organising a ball for her 30th birthday in April as a fundraiser for the charity.
Emily says: "Beat supports anyone with an eating disorder or directly impacted by one, like friends, family or professionals. Beat have helped me a huge amount after suffering from eating disorders since I was young. They helped guide me with what I should say to my GP and how to tell my family and friends that I had eating disorders.
"1.25 million people in the UK have a diagnosed eating disorder and eating disorders cost the UK's economy £16.8 billion each year. With rising numbers of young people developing eating disorders for the last few years, following the pandemic, Beat needs support more than ever.
"Early intervention of the illness improves the chance of fully recovering, but with rising cases and NHS waiting lists continuing to be extremely long (which is a large part of my story), many including myself, miss out on a chance of this and end up struggling for decades; many becoming chronic cases."
Emily, who spreads her time between Cardiff and Bristol, says her story is one of "suffering, waiting, giving up hope and gaining hope again". But she said the past year, due to "extreme luck" she has been able to get the help she so desperately needed.
She says: " If I didn’t get lucky I don’t know if I would still be around now, or made it to 29, let alone 30."
Emily has struggled with different types of eating disorder since she was eight years old, and has been fighting to get help for the past 12 years.
"I first went to my GP terrified at 18, when anorexia became unmanageable. I was suffering from the physical symptoms of being freezing, dizzy, faint and also from anxiety, intense guilt and self-hate every time I ate or skipped a workout. I found it was more desirable to be exhausted, starving and in pain than to feel that way," she says.
Despite being referred to specialist NHS services, Emily didn’t quite make it to receive help. The waiting list was around 10 months, and after being on the list for half of that, she needed to move to London for university, and her funding was cut.
She explains: "The same process of referral-waitlist-funding-cut happened again a couple more times as I moved between London boroughs and I was told that despite being underweight and very mentally unwell, BMIs were used to determine priority ordering and mine just “wasn't quite low enough”.
"I felt dejected as this propelled my existing beliefs that I wasn't enough, I accepted that I would just have to live with this illness."
But Emily found that she was falling into cycles of uncontrolled binge eating, and she says her mental health had "got to one of its worst points".
She says: "The bingeing in between starvation/exercise periods meant that my BMI remained “too high” to get seen, and to my friends and family I looked “fine” whilst internally breaking.
"I was even often complimented for my 'skinny' and 'fit' body whilst I believed I was worthless. The cruel reality of body dysmorphia meant I couldn't see what I actually looked like. I wanted to 'be like all the other beautiful women I know' as what I saw in the mirror was a monster."
In the midst of the pandemic in late 2020, Emily asked her GP for help one more time as she described her quality of life as being "unbearable".
The strain of the pandemic had propelled her intense fear of losing control and she was starving herself and over-exercising.
Emily was placed on another waiting list, which had grown to two years long because of the pandemic, but she was told that her condition was concerning and needed to be monitored closely.
"My mental health was extreme and I had signs of physical deterioration in my muscles and heart. At that time I was rushed into A&E weekly, but my condition was still not critical enough to be prioritised," she says.
"Whilst waiting, my physical health had declined to a dangerous degree and my cognitive ability had reduced to the point that I couldn’t string sentences together. I had given up all hope."
In August 2021, with the help of her partner Adam, who was desperate to help his girlfriend find help, they found they were able to access some private medical insurance through a loved one, and Emily was hospitalised immediately.
Spending the next year as an inpatient and day patient at eating disorder facilities has been fighting to get better.
She says: "These treatment centres saved my life, and as I said before, I’m not sure I’d still here without them.
"I'm now on the mend, but still have a long way to go and will be in outpatient treatment for years to come. Eating birthday cake for the first time in 10 years was a major moment for me. It might sound silly, but eating cake was a terrifying thought and I couldn't have done it without the support of the staff at the day centre. It sounds silly to be terrified of cake, and eating it did come with some backlash, but I did it."
Now, with the help of her close friends they are hoping to be able to help others and Emily has set up a Justgiving page that has already raised more than £200 for Beat.
"I find it scary to think how many other people are out there in the same situation as me and I do wonder what life would've been like if I'd been able to access early intervention when I was younger," says Emily. "Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of all mental health illnesses. I find it sad that I had to reach severe desperation to get help and only got help through a stroke of luck in accessing private care.
"Throughout all of this I was able to tap into Beat's resources, allowing me to hold hope that it might get better some day. Beat is a lifeline for so many people, and was a lifeline for me, and if we can raise money to help others then it will be a great way to start my 30s and look to the future."
If you want to help, the fundraising page is here.
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