'I had an eating disorder but I didn't have the words to ask for help'

ANOREXIA SUFFERER LIFTS LID ON BATTLE AS HE HELPS OTHERS

- JAKE MEEUS-JONES Sunday Mercury Writer

A MIDLAND man who suffered from anorexia said his condition was partly "fuelled" by people complimenting his 'weight loss.'

Dave Chawner, 36, has spoken out about the realities of living with anorexia after Tom Daley reflected on his experience with body dysmorphia and bulimia ahead of his new documentary.

At its worst, Dave described his anorexia as a "passive suicide attempt" and said he used his body to show that he wasn’t okay.

He would skip university classes to weigh himself, and despite knowing it was abnormal behaviour, he would justify it “as other addicts do” by saying it was his “quirk.”

Despite friends and family pleading with him to get help, Dave said - due to the condition - he wrongly convinced himself being able to eat very little gave him “power and superiority.”

He eventually got help after a nurse intervened, and he spent two and a half years as an outpatient.

Now happy and healthy, he works with the eating disorder charity Beat and runs a mental-health-themed comedy course.

Dave, a comedian from Burton-On-Trent, said: “I think it was more born out of insecurity and striving for an identity - and to a lesser extent, I think all people have that - but weight and calories became an obsession - it was something to zero in on.

“By the later days, I actively wanted to look ill. It later became a passive suicide attempt.

“At that point in time, I knew I was not okay, but I didn’t have the words to show that, so I used my body.”

Dave's anorexia was born out of a combination of different factors that affected him mentally and physically in his teens.

He said: “I had a lovely childhood, but when university was coming up and I had to leave friends and family, it was a way of being in control of something when everything else was out of control.