Key Highlights
- When she hit her ‘goal weight’ and still didn’t feel happy, a supportive online community showed her a new way to liveMegan Jayne Crabbe’s transformation goes beyond the physical.
- “My ‘before’ was trying to make myself as small as possible in every conceivable way: my body, voice, emotions, opinions,” she says.
- “My ‘after’ is allowing myself to be my biggest self, however that looks.”Crabbe, 31, became aware of diets before she turned 10.
- As she entered puberty that intensified and she became fixated on magazine articles about how to change her body, eating as little as possible as a way to manage anxiety about school and growing up. At 14 Crabbe was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa and body dysmorphia: “I was convinced I was fat and disgusting and needed to lose more weight.” For years she concealed how unwell she was, until the physical symptoms became impossible to ignore.
- Her body began shutting down – severe fatigue, low blood pressure, hearing loss and dizziness: “There’s hair that grows all over your body, because it’s trying to keep itself warm.”She spent several months between mental health facilities and hospital.
