Writing gluten-free books helped me with anorexia

Becky Excell has sometimes felt alone in his life, from the struggles of friendship to a devastating eating disorder.

But when it began to create gluten -free recipes, it is possible to become a turning point.

The 34 -year -old, who lives in Colchester, has published seven kitchen books and has more than one million followers on social networks.

Here, in his own, he explains how he has found a community and is helping them feel more normal.

Growing up, I was trust, competitive and sports. I had many friends until 13 or 14 years. It was then that I noticed that everyone changed them and felt except. At that age, it was a feeling that it was difficult to understand and speak.

Fortunately, I made new friends in the sixth form and with my boyfriend, Mark. However, when I went to Manchester to study law in 2009 with a new group of roommates, that feeling of being at the limit began to advance again.

At the same time, I began to feel physically badly with exucian stomach pains and complete exhaustion.

I went to the doctor, who suggested eliminating gluten from my diet, and began to feel better. It was after this that I discovered that celiac disease should have tried before receiving instructions to eliminate gluten from my diet.

Unfortunately, I was very late in the study and so disconnected from any possible possibility of friendship that I ended up abandoning and enrolled in a completely different university. I was full of hope for a new beginning, but it was like reliving that lonely and aliente experience again.

I couldn’t leave him again and return home with my parents for the second time, so I caught him. I was almost completely isolated and only in my room seven days a week, rarely speaking or seeing someone, despite having joined all societies under the sun to try to make new friends.

I never told Mark how hard he was finding him and he never completely understood why he would cry every time he went after visiting me for a few days.

I thought that if I was alone and miserable for a year, I could use time to enter the best form of my life. Unfortunately for me, that meean was common to excess excess and restrict food. I ended up eating an uncontrollable binge of being so physically exhausted and under fed.

This cycle continued until it is possible to complete my first year, when Mark and I agreed that I had to transfer the universities to continue my last two years closer to home.

Finally I graduated from the University of Essex in 2013 and I didn’t have much luck with friendship there either. My weight collapsed and my relationship with food and exercise was in jirs. My stress that surrounded that the caressing of that toxic cycle made me a horrible person to be close, especially the food for those who were involved.

After starting the courage to seek help, I was diagnosed with nervous anorexia with attraction trends. The following years of treatment were a great fight. They told me that I had so much weight that I could sleep.

After spending time in a eating disorder unit, they told me that if I did, zoon to be sectioned, which was the call of attention I needed.

That day, I called my gym, where I used to go twice a day for several hours at the same time, and I told them to hear my membership and never come back.

I weighed, looked calories or legs in the gym for more than a decade.

I will never be ‘recovered’, always in ‘Recovery’, but now I have control, something that was the case in the depths of what I can say was the sausage period of my life.

Duration The last months of my title in 2013, I started my gluten -free food blog called Gluten Free Cuppa Tea. As gluten -free options, distant and commonly disappointing at that time, I often made my own recipes and would publish them there for custody. Who knows, maybe one day someone could read the subject? Or simply do them.

Little knew that this hobby would later be the key to repairing my tense relationship with food. It is a cold meal a completely separated purpose for me: I was making food for others that one day could find the recipe. I began to receive comments from other gluten -free dining rooms that had tried my recipe and I loved it, so I did more. Suddenly, the food was not just something selfish: it was something I could use to help others.

The blog was just a hobby while working full time in public relations and marketing. But in 2017, I took a massive risk and left my job to spend more time. I thought about the potential to write a recipe book and then began to send messages to the editors who considered him too much niche to bother.

However, after persisting, and on my last trip to London before Covid Lockdowns, I with an editor for lunch and sacrificed an agreement for two books.

Fast advance until today and now I have seven sunday Times gluten recipe books. My most recent book aimed to make it more affordable eating gluten -free food because it is too exensive. Gluten -free foods should be affordable and accessible to all who need it.

It is a leg crazy trip and did not expect the books to do it so well. My blog is now in more than one million visits every month and I am so slippery that it shows that risk.

I love being able to help people who could fight to find gluten -free meals to enjoy. I hope to be helping a community to feel more normal; That is one of my best goals.

Directing my blog and social networks has helped create a community, which has been there for me in difficult times.

They are so supportive every time I talk about my experiences with friendship, my eating disorder and more recent, they supported me through my diagnosis of BRCA2.

They told me that I had an 88% chance to develop breast cancer, which led me to have a double mastectomy and a 31 -year -old breast reconstruction.

I will also need the ovaries to take away at the age of 40 to reduce my risk of developing ovarian cancer. While it is a terrifying thought, I know it is the best and my community always supports me.

In addition to continuing helping them through my recipes, I want to continue creating awareness about the gluten -free community and celiac beyond that.

I want to press for the change in hospitals and schools where a gluten -free diet is not always treated, just as it should go.

I want to help reduce the stigma that surrounds being gluten without. And I want to continue with the impulse that gluten -free foods are more accessible and affordable.

Recently I attended Downing Street to present a petition to the government to end the postal code lottery for gluten -free recipes in my role as ambassador to the Balefician organization Celiac UK.

I want to help make the change happen and return to those who have helped me.

So, I thought I still don’t have super close friends, I never feel alone again. And 16 years later, Mark is still here too, along with our puppy, Peggy, so I’m always grateful.

If you are concerned about the problems raised in this article, help and support are available to Eat messy.