I first started throwing up at age 14, I had a friend Courtney who was doing it, so I thought to myself “why not” little did I know it would be something that consumed me for over 10 years.

I’d never considered throwing up or starving myself as an option – but I doubt many eating disorders start that way. My friend Courtney had gone from a size 8 to 12 whilst dating her new boyfriend, she still looked great at a size 12 and had the body type to pull of any weight, she was one of those lucky gurls who could look fab at any weight.

One day I saw her after she’d broken up with her boyfriend (the one who she’d been with whilst the ‘comfort’ kilos were being added up) . When I saw her I immediately noticed she had lost at least 15kgs in the period of about 3 weeks since my last seeking her, I couldn’t help but say something, ‘omg Courts your so skinny’ I prized her, as is the tradition with most females. Praising weight loss and ignoring weight gains.

Courtney was a very different person to anyone I’ve ever met before, she was very beautiful but would lose her mind with intense and misdirected rage at you, for no reason, at any given time, it was ‘one of her quirks’.

Later that same night we’d gone out as teenagers do, and returned home to her mum’s place where we made food and called it a night, she asked me to get her a bucket – we hadn’t drink that much, so I was confused why she needed it. I returned to her room bucket in hand and she started to throw up. When I asked her if she was ok, she told me “I’m bulimic, now even if I don’t want to throw up after I eat my body just rejects the food anyway, how fucked up is that”. I was shocked, I didn’t really understand it, I mean, why bother? But it didn’t take long for me to start the exact same thing probably I just wanted to be skinny in the beginning, I wanted the extra attention, I was always a healthy size 8-10 but it wasn’t enough, I didn’t feel enough for people, I needed something, that something was to be skinner, the skinniest.

I started throwing up one night after eating Mcdonalds, I remember thinking that my throwing up sounded so loud that there was noway I could sustain such a habit. I was only 14 and I didn’t really get ‘into it’ until around 18, at the time I was in ‘party girl mode’ and my friend Courtney and I had been reunited, which, in all fairness was a massive disaster, she had moved into my place and we would openly throw up around each other, help one another hide plastic bags full of vomit.

We weren’t fat by any means but I always wanted to be ‘skinnier’ I didn’t really understand the long term effects of being Bulmic and little did I know I was on a very slippy slope.

After about 2 years of being Bulimic I was started skipping meals, I’d go 3 days without food on average, this was a standard for me – it was the only way I could keep my ‘body’ looking just right.

Around this time I met another friend, lets call her *Sherral. Sherral and I met at Tafe, we were both in the same course Marketing and Advertising – we soon started swapping ‘dieting tricks’ these included replacing food with Red Bulls, the logic being that you’d still have enough energy to get through the day with the caffeine hit. Sherral didn’t know it at the time but I was also throwing up anything that I ate, anything that entered into my body soon found its way down a toilet bowl.

The worse thing about being Bulimic is that you have no energy to do anything, people don’t realise this but each time you throw up you soonb after need to pass out from from doing so, its a massive time expense.

I would say that at my lowest I weighed 42.5kgs. I’d also add that at the time, I didn’t see my weight as a real problem, I thought I was doing what needed to be done in order to land more modelling and acting jobs. Even though I couldn’t get out of bed for an early morning shoot without my mum feeding me a low calorie biscuit and coffee.

My daily routine was getting up, heading to Tafe no food or on the way I’d get a Red Bull and Chicken stick then get to Tafe head to the bathrooms and throw up. After I’d throw up, I’d work out for at least 1 hour before class. After class I’d avoid food and then if we had a long break workout again. I was always tired. My brain couldn’t really retain any new information and even things I knew, I couldn’t think clearly enough to converse with people. I recall a moment when I was with a friend and trying to have a conversation with them was as though I was trying to relay messages from a new learned language.

The worst part of this was that people would comment on my appearance in ‘awe’ of the skin and bone I had become, I would hear each comment as a new reason to keep ‘it’ up. I was obsessed with my weight, it became something else entirely – my weight became the reason I felt ‘good enough’ my thoughts would go something like this, does this person like me? “Well, I feel particularly skinny today so how could they not”.. it gave me a deluded self confidence, and it was something that I could control, I had ‘this one thing’ that I could control.

People need to realise that being a size 6 isn’t healthy no matter how hard you want to make out it is, it just isn’t. Your malnourished, my whole concept of food was based around a strategic plan where I had brian washed myself into believing I ‘always had to lose weight’. Now let’s be clear here, it wasn’t ‘a fear of putting on weight’ it was a genuine attempt to scare myself into always losing weight. And it worked, after a couple of weeks of telling myself ‘you have to lose more weight’ all my mind did was replay the message ‘you have to lose more weight’. At 45 Kilos your body try’s to store anything it can, so you are consistently working against it to keep up the ‘skin and bones image’ you want to maintain.

The whole size 6 appealed to me because at the time I was a model and wanted to be an actress. I would tell myself “If you really want this you need to workout harder’, it was harmless to tell these small pushes, but I was also skipping whole days of eating and working out 3 hours a day – purely insane.

I started worrying about my teeth. I was 25 and living in London when I decided to get help for my eating disorder. I’d researched therapists and found one, her name was Roslyn. By the time I had met with Rosyln I was eating roughly $10 pounds of food a night then throwing it up and passing out, I did this every signal night for the past few weeks and I knew I wasn’t getting any better, I had to come to terms with the fact this ‘ thing’ was dictating my entire life and that I had lost all control over it.

I would wake up exhausted from throwing up all night, then make something to eat for breakfast – I’d would avoid throwing it up, and at lunchtime, it honestly depended on the day, on good days, I’d just have something and go about my day – on bad days… I’d head to the local store buy something full of sugar eat it on the way home, then throw it up. I’d have about 15 – 20 minutes until the ‘exhaustion’ would set in. Then after the 20 minutes, I’d need a nap, even after the nap, I’d feel like trash the rest of the day, I’d waste my day throwing up, basically.

Nighttime would come and I’d repeat the same process except I’d be throwing up in the shower, and then be passing out. I was a Mess.

Once I met Roslyn she explained how I’d have to deal with why I was throwing up, the real reasons, not the pretend ‘ I just want to be thin’ bullshit I had been feeding myself. So, I went to her, and we worked through some really hard things, stuff from my past and growing up, alot of the things that I had dealt with previously in therapy but this time it had different ‘meanings’. I wish I could say that I stopped, but I didn’t. That’s the thing with eating disorders they can come about again at any given time, especially if you don’t ‘deal with it’ in a real life changing type of way. I snapped a tooth eating one day around that time when I was living in London – that was after I had ‘quit’ throwing up, I mean, a tooth, it was a small section of a bottom front tooth and all I could think was ‘God, my starting to lose my teeth’.

In the summer of 2016 I met Brad just after returning from living abroad. He was a great partner and to be honest he never did anything wrong by me. But I was hiding a secret, I was Bulimic and at this stage it was impacting my performance at work. At the time I thought my life was good, on paper it seemed ‘fine’ even ‘great’ but I wasn’t happy and I started to take it out on my body.

Here’s what a normal day would look like, on a good I’d get up and go to work, on a bad day I’d get up and on the way to work stop by the local shops and buy whatever chocolate was on sale, it could be anything from a Bounty to a family sized Cadbury block. Once I’d rampaged through the shopping alisels, I’d soon thereafter pay for it, consum it like a sick mental patient and then … head to a local public toilet and proceed to throw it all up.

It’s such a disgusting and self hating act – to induce vomiting from your own body. The action itself and the rapid action of your fingers cause you to have small cuts down your throught at all times. How could I do this to myself? Day in and day out.

Brad and I moved in and I finally told him that I was a Bulimic, he’d already put up with quite a lot of my ‘antics’ – the mood swings were mear side effects of the raging abuse I was putting myself through. Whebn I finally told him, I promised to get clean and started therapy again.

The last time I throw up or stopped eating for days on end was back in 2016 – so I’ve been clean for 3 years now, it feels like much longer, I still binge on food – the only difference is I know I can’t throw it up, so I don’t. I remind myself “no, you don’t do that anymore’.

I wrote this as a message to anyone else who’s suffered through this, its not a good to live and I thank God I was able to quit.

Much Love,

Jasmine Speers