Emma O’Neil says she was so thin she’d get bruises from lying on the hospital bed

Sep 20, 2012 20:01 GMT  ·  By
Emma O’Neil releases her own shocking photos to raise awareness on anorexia
   Emma O’Neil releases her own shocking photos to raise awareness on anorexia

Growing up, Emma O’Neil was just an athletic, sporty girl who would not waste a thought on the number of calories or whether she was “fat.” All that changed in her teens, when she became “Britain’s worst anorexic.”

8 years into her recovery, Emma is now speaking out in the hope of helping other women who might be struggling with life-threatening anorexia.

She’s the face of The Only Way Is Up Foundation and, to prove that the eating disorder is no joke, she’s released a couple of very shocking photos from when she was at her thinnest, Mirror reports.

At 18, Emma weighed no more than a 4-year-old. It was the culmination of years of starving herself in a bid to see how much more weight she could lose.

She says she didn’t start dieting out of vanity but rather out of curiosity. At first, she would make herself sick but she was caught by her mother and forced to give up that habit.

In response, she stopped eating.

“I didn’t realize how ill I was – I didn’t realize what I was doing to myself and my family. Some of my friends I was in hospital with, who weren’t as ill as I was, have died. I’m so lucky to be here,” she says.

She spent most of her teen years in hospitals and recalls times when she was actually force-fed by nurses because she would pull out her feeding tubes.

To Emma, at that time, being told that she was “the worst anorexic” doctors had seen was something she took pride in.

“I was so thin I couldn’t even sleep on a normal hospital bed. My bones were like razor blades jutting out and I was left bruised,” she recalls.

“It certainly wasn’t a vanity thing, because I was a very sporty teenager and wasn’t chubby at all. I have a very addictive personality and I remember trying to see how thin I could get, and I started being sick after I ate,” Emma says.

She describes anorexia as a “prison” from which she’s happy she managed to get out alive. Many of her friends didn’t.

This is why she’s now using her voice and her own experience to shock women in realizing what a dangerous slope this is. She’s also working with medical staff to help them better cope with anorexics.

“I want to do all I can to help other people who are suffering,” she says.