We may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this post.
If your a girl, I’m sure at one point in life you have been conscious of your weight. Or wanted to be as skinny as the girl walking in front of you, or have that dream bikini body. So I was shocked when I learnt about Alice Jackson who developed anorexia during her first year at Bournemouth University.
She said that at her lowest point while battling the eating disorder she didn’t care if she lived or died, but her life has suddenly turned around as she put on 33 pounds in order to become a lingerie model for curvy women.
Alice suffered from depression shortly after starting her retail course at Bournemouth in 2006, and soon after became obsessed with her weight. She went running for up to two hours a day and only ate a handful of lettuce leaves at night.
Alice Jackson Before & after her recovery from Anorexia In just three months, her weight plummeted from 137-108 lbs, which is way below the recommended healthy weight for a 5’9 frame. Alice finally decided to get help after her parents told her that she was too thin, and her school doctor referred her to a hospital, who diagnosed her with anorexia nervosa. She spent a year receiving counselling with the somerset and Wessex Eating Disorders Association, eventually gaining enough weight to be deemed medically stable.
Today, Alice weighs 154 pounds and has been chosen as a finalist for fuller figure lingerie from “Curvy Kate’s” annual “Star in a bra” competition that her friends entered her into. Kate told the Daily Mail that “It started when I was in my first year of university when I was 18. I started to put on a lot of weight and wasn’t confident so I went home at Christmas and decided to go on a diet..It spiraled into cutting down my food and over-exercising, and before I knew it I was eating very little. I was controlled by not eating so my weight went down pretty rapidly.I felt really really depressed and I didn’t care if I died, I just felt awful, all I could think about was food and calories…When I got to June and I was doing Race for Life, my parents were like “you’re too thin, you need to see someone”. “I didn’t feel well, I felt really ill and had no energy because I was eating so little and starving myself and over-exercising so running on empty. That was a really difficult summer. It’s a horrible thing to be trapped in your thoughts about food and weight. I felt really really depressed and I didn’t care if I died, I just felt awful, all I could think about was food and calories.”
While in hospital doctors told Alice that she would only feel better if she began to eat properly. So she took their advice and started taking better care of herself, reaching a healthy BMI rate by the end of her second year at college.
Alice now lives in London and works in the fashion industry as a footwear designer. She said that her weight has gone up gradually, but she has weighed 154 lbs for over a year. She said: “I feel happy with myself, my body feels like it’s at its natural shape. When I was anorexic I used to lie in bed and could feel all my bones. It was just a really horrible time to be so trapped, I thought I would never get better.‘It’s so nice to be able to eat again and to be able to have things because I was so strict with myself before.There’s a lot of things I didn’t eat, I didn’t eat chocolate at all and never had bread either. But I love chocolate now, it’s my favorite thing to have as a treat. I am confident in my body and being healthy and I think it’s really important women don’t keep feeling dissatisfied with themselves because people tell them to lose half a pound. I’m happy to be curvy and I’m proud to be curvy – and I think that’s important.”
Alice is competing against 30 other curvy models, where people vote online to see who will be crowned the new model of next years range of “curvy Kate underwear” The winner is set to be announced later sometime this year.
