my mother was a "feeder" - throughout my childhood she was always dieting and when she dieted she used to feed me all the treats that really she wanted for herself, and used to get quite upset/angry if I didn't want them so naturally, to please my mother I ate whatever it was that she had bought especially for me.   By the age of 6 or 7 I was pretty overweight and she started to put me on diets too...and so I spent my life from that point on either on a pretty restrictive diet (it was the norm for diets to restrict to 800 cals back in those days)or being emotionally blackmailed with copious amounts of food by my mother...and so that was my norm - lose a substantial amount of weight, then regain it again twice as quickly and with a bit more on top. By the time I was 25 I was so desperate to lose weight and keep it off that I hired a personaltrainer 3 times a week, and got fixated with the gym... I'd go 7 days a week, for 3hrs at a time, and felt bad if anything got in the way of my going...I lost over 60lbs in 3 months, but this was quickly followed by a gain of 80lbs in the 3 months that followed!I was so cross with myself, but I started to suspect at that point that this wasn't "normal".. .it was in the year that followed that I came across Joanna Poppink 's 'Triumphant Journey' online - I read it and wept, so much of it was me. At the time it was the ONLY literature I could find that suggested that anything other than anorexia and bullimia could be an ED....and as a result I found it easy to remain in denial, can carry on in the only way that I knew. It was only after the birth of my first daughter, when I was 31 that I dared to suggest to my physician that I needed something more than dieting to sort out my weight issues...we still never mentioned EDs as such, but I was referred to an ED clinic, where I was assessed and told that my probs were mild and that I didn'tneed therapy, but they would let me see their dietician... 3 years later they agreed to refer me for CBT,but I ended up putting things on hold whilst I had my 2nd child... ...and it was only last November, aged 38 that I started seeing a clinical psychologist.. and at some point early in 2011, as turned 39, I forced myself to stand in front of the mirror and say "I have an eating disorder"