14 DAY TRIAL // Samira Jay is 18 years old now, but she might not have gotten to this age had her family, friends and teachers not learned that she was using pro-anorexic websites, where she’d found her thinspiration – and even became a role model for other girls looking to lose weight. After coming this close to organ failure and being admitted to hospital in critical condition five separate times, Samira is finally speaking about her struggle with the Mirror – in the hope that other girls will also be inspired to seek help.
She first began to have an unhealthy relationship with food when she was 12, which is when anorexia set in. However, at first, Samira explains, refusing to eat was in no way related to wanting to lose weight, but rather to the fact that she had very low self-esteem and confidence in herself, which made her believe things would be improving if she changed something about her body. Aged 14, she learned she suffered from an eating disorder and took to the Internet to search for a solution to it – instead, she found the so-called pro-ana (pro-anorexic) and pro-mia (pro-bulimia) websites.
Samira then set up a Bebo profile, which she constantly kept updated with recent photos of her, each one showing her thinner than the one before. She was still unhappy though, believing she needed to lose more weight to become accepted and loved by those around her. At this time, she survived solely on water and chewing gum, and crisps, which she could only eat if they were crushed and a bag of which she could make last for two weeks.
“Malnourished, I had no energy and I felt constantly dizzy and faint. I tried to carry on as normal, but when a friend heard me being sick in the toilets, she told my teachers. Mum confronted me about my anorexia and I agreed to go to a specialist eating disorders unit near my home in Newcastle. I weighed just 6st 2lbs and the doctor told me I was close to organ failure. For two months I was kept in isolation at the clinic and I was so desperate to leave, I put on weight and promised I would follow the meal plan. But I didn’t. All the time I could hear a voice in my head, saying: You’re fat. You aren’t good enough. It completely drowned out my family and friends pleas,” Samira says for the aforementioned publication.
Eager to break free and be unobserved again so that she could continue flushing food down the toilet or making herself sick, Samira promised she would stick to the healthy eating plan and even gained more weight. She would need yet another 4 emergency hospitalizations until she finally realized that her condition was, indeed, life-threatening. Also then, she erased her Bebo profile and has been trying ever since to make other girls in the same situation see that they are literally killing themselves.
“By the time I was 16, I finally began to acknowledge I had a problem. I weighed just 5st 5lbs and had a BMI of 13 healthy is between 19 and 25. I had constant chest pains and my joints felt stiff and weak. […] Now I’m 18, at college studying IT and I’m the happiest I’ve been in years. I weigh 8st 7lbs, which has been hard getting used to. Occasionally, I go online and look at the profiles of pro-anorexic girls. Seeing them upsets me and I desperately want to help them. I also feel relieved that I’m not like that anymore,” Samira says.
For the rest of the chilling story, please refer here. Below is a video of an older report exposing pro-ana and pro-mia websites that promote thinspiration. *Note: Caution is advised as it contains shocking images.