At 7st I was STILL skipping meals so I could neck two bottles of prosecco a night… I was a drunkorexic
AS I popped the cork of my second bottle of prosecco, my friends cheered.
But there was nothing to celebrate. Inside I was panicking, knowing that, by midnight, I would have consumed 1,300 calories that day – just from booze.
That left me with just 700 calories for food, if I stuck to the recommended NHS guideline of 2,000 calories a day for a woman.
But I often ate less, thinking 1,800 was ‘better’.
I wasn’t worried about gaining weight because, despite my massive alcohol consumption, I would skip lunch four times a week in a deliberate ploy to stay thin and maintain my size eight frame.
I was indulging in a dangerous trend called “drunkorexia”, which experts are now pushing to classify as a disease.
A recent study found one in three female students was regularly cutting back on food and increasing physical exercise to compensate for calories gained from alcohol.
I would skip lunch four times a week in a deliberate ploy to stay thin.
“‘Drunkorexia’ is a pattern of behaviour that combines diet restrictions, excessive exercise and consumption of large amounts of alcohol, leading to significant physical and mental health risks,” said Professor Elena Andrade Gomez, who led the research at La Rioja University in Spain.
Type the term into any social media platform and worried users will confess to cutting down on calories if they’re drinking.
As a 46-year-old qualified nutritionist and mum to a boy, 12, and girl, 10, it horrifies me that throughout a significant portion of my twenties and thirties I was a “drunkorexic”, but didn’t realise it.
It was the mid-noughties, Girls Aloud were huge, and I was living the life of a fully-fledged party girl in London.
My job as a showbiz journalist seemed glamorous, but it was exhausting, too. 4am finishes weren’t uncommon and I was always desperate for the next scoop, happy to chase minor celebs around nightclubs and attend fancy launch parties.
It was a very, very boozy lifestyle, with prosecco being my poison of choice.
I was naturally slim – 5ft 6in and 7st 7lbs. But I knew that to maintain that weight I needed to stick to roughly 1,800 calories a day.
Even though I’d rarely turn down free booze, I didn’t consider myself to have a drinking problem. I got up for work every day, often on little sleep, and turned out good stories.
I was where I needed to be, when I needed to be there, but it was often with a drink in hand and a rumbling tummy.
I could handle the hangovers and never did anything outrageous, but what I couldn’t deal with was my weight.
I discovered a hack: I would barely eat and ‘save’ my food calories for alcohol.
Because virtually everyone I spoke to, from girl band singers to Z-list reality TV stars, was really slim.
This was before the body positivity movement and you were looked down upon if you couldn’t squeeze yourself into Topshop’s skinniest of skinny jeans.
Signs and symptoms of anorexia
- if you're under 18, your weight and height being lower than expected for your age
- if you're an adult, having an unusually low body mass index
- missing meals, eating very little or avoiding eating any foods you see as fattening
- believing you are fat when you are a healthy weight or underweight
- taking medication to reduce your hunger (appetite suppressants)
- your periods stopping (in women who have not reached menopause) or not starting (in younger women and girls)
- physical problems, such as feeling dizzy, dry skin and hair loss
So I discovered a hack: I would barely eat and ‘save’ my food calories for alcohol.
For lunch I might scoff a bag of crisps or a bowl of pasta and then eat nothing else all day. That meant that if I drank two bottles of prosecco (nutritional value: zero), I’d stay within my self-imposed calorie limit.
Once, during a sudden flash of worry that I might have an eating disorder, I confessed to a then-friend what I was doing.
“Emily,” she laughed. “We all do it. Drink the calories, hold off the food.”
I feel sick thinking about the impact on my body.
Feeling validated and that my behaviour was normal, I carried on doing what I was doing.
Now, I feel sick thinking about the impact on my body. I was drinking an estimated 40 units of booze a week – way over the recommended NHS guidance of 14.
My disordered relationship with alcohol and food continued after my now-husband, construction worker Jamie, 36, proposed when I was 29.
A month before my wedding I was slogging it out on a rowing machine, a glass of Pinot on the coffee table in front of me as “thinspiration”. I’d do half an hour of rowing while watching EastEnders, then enjoy my post-workout drink.
NHS guidelines on drinking alcohol
According to the NHS, regularly drinking more than 14 units of alcohol a week risks damaging your health.
To keep health risks from alcohol to a low level if you drink most weeks:
- men and women are advised not to drink more than 14 units a week on a regular basis
- spread your drinking over 3 or more days if you regularly drink as much as 14 units a week
- if you want to cut down, try to have several drink-free days each week
If you're pregnant or think you could become pregnant, the safest approach is not to drink alcohol at all to keep risks to your baby to a minimum.
You read more on the .
In my head, I was ‘healthy’ because I was exercising and keeping slim. I had no idea, or concern, about what it might be doing to my insides, or my mental health.
If I knew I had a night out planned, I would calorie count all week, building up a deficit so I could justify the two bottles of prosecco I’d be knocking back.
I’d have a box of grapes for breakfast, maybe a slice of toast too. I’d spend my lunch break at the gym or swimming – another few hundred calories burned – then fill up on a big bowl of pasta late afternoon.
I’d forsake any other solids, except maybe a packet of crisps or an apple, so I could indulge in alcohol ‘guilt-free’ that evening.
I didn’t think my drinking was an issue and I certainly didn’t see myself as having an eating disorder.
Despite weighing just 7st by the time I got married, aged 33, an acquaintance laughed at me .
“You’ve got a tummy on you,” she sniggered, showing me a picture she’d snapped of me.
It was bullying, plain and simple, but it didn’t help my self-esteem which I realise in hindsight was in tatters.
Nobody knew I was living like this – to everyone else I was just a skinny girl who loved a drink and a party. They saw me eating, there was no cause for concern.
I was slim when I married, but it took leaving a job I was unhappy in, retraining and finding stability with Jamie to end my unhealthy relationship with food and alcohol.
Fast-forward 15 years and I am appalled at how I treated my body, controlled by the idea that staying slim and over-drinking would make me happy.
Now in my job, I advise clients to focus on whole foods as part of a balanced diet and keep alcohol consumption low. I warn against crash diets and restrictive eating programmes and focus on quality of intake.
Sadly, it seems the way I lived my life still isn’t unusual. If a client came to me with the eating – and drinking – habits I had in my twenties, I’d send them straight to their GP.
I may not be a size eight anymore, but I am fitter and healthier than ever, and I proudly blame my wobbly belly on birthing two huge babies and eating too much cheese. I have no idea how much I weigh – maybe 10st, maybe 11st – and I haven’t counted calories in years.
Drunkorexia - what the experts say:
Dr Louisa Beckford, Consultant Psychiatrist at Orri Eating Disorder Clinic told Fabulous:
In terms of ‘drunkorexia’, this isn’t a medical eating disorder diagnosis but is a colloquial term used to describe a pattern of restricting food ahead of consuming alcohol in an attempt to reduce the impact of alcohol on calorie consumption and potential effects on weight.
There could be acute health risks from someone restricting their food intake and then consuming alcohol including effects on alcohol metabolism and enhanced behavioural effects of drinking too much alcohol.
In someone with an existing eating disorder, using alcohol and restriction in this way could potentially be very risky. Someone with an eating disorder could be at risk of severely low blood glucose levels associated with acute restriction of food ahead of alcohol consumption.
Drunkorexia also appears to be associated with excessive concern about weight and shape. These concerns are also seen in eating disorders including anorexia and bulimia and it is possible that manipulating food and alcohol intake in this way could contribute to the development of a more severe eating disorder in vulnerable individuals.
Misuse of alcohol and dependence on alcohol can be seen in individuals with eating disorders and a joined-up approach to the treatment of both conditions is essential.
It can sometimes be hard to tell whether these patterns of behaviour are becoming part of an eating disorder. If an individual is worried, I would encourage them to seek support from their GP who might be able to conduct some screening tests for eating disorders. There is also a lot of valuable information on eating disorders provided by Beat () and on the Orri website ().
What worries me, as the mother of a tweenager, is that the obsession with calories and staying skinny is still very much a part of adolescent girls and young women’s lives.
My daughter has already come home asking what a calorie is because “Sally at school says you need to keep track of them”.
I have explained as clearly as I can that calories don’t matter and I hope that the way I live my life now – by enjoying food, taking pleasure in cooking and not worrying whether an extra bowl of ice cream (or glass of wine) will take me over any daily count – will help her learn, and keep, good habits.
If I’d heard the word drunkorexia when I was in my twenties, I’d have laughed and poured another drink.
But it’s not funny and, in hindsight, I could easily have been this dangerous disorder’s poster girl.
-original.jpeg)
-original.jpeg)
