A woman who silently battled anorexia for more than a decade has told how her ongoing eating disorder has ‘taken years away’ from her life and how as a result she now suffers from stomach issues and has not had a regular period for five years.
Alex Alcala, 25, who first started restricting her diet when she was just 12 years old as a competitive gymnast and is still battling the eating disorder, said for years she ‘didn’t want to share it with anyone’ and struggled to talk about her illness with friends and family.
But in the last year, the admin assistant from Orange County, California, told Daily Mail Online she has ‘come a long way’ after she started using Instagram to help her adopt a healthier lifestyle and hold herself ‘accountable’ by documenting her struggles and successes.
Survivor: Alex Alcala, 25, pictured left nine weeks ago and right seven weeks ago, has told of her ongoing 13-year battle with anorexia
Pain: Alex, pictured, from Orange County, California, said anorexia has had repercussions on her body – including stomach pain and five years without a regular period
Long-term struggle: She said she first became anorexic when she was just 12 years old when she was still a competitive gymnast
Alex, who did gymnastics from the age of four to 17, said eating disorders are ‘really common’ in the sport. But it was after she stopped, when she was 19, that her illness reached a new level of severity.
Alex, who now tries to avoid weighing herself or counting calories, said her anorexia became ‘extreme’ when she was 19 when she lost 40lbs in just five months.
She said anorexia has at times made her stomach so painful she could not go to work and that it has ‘taken years away’ from her life.
Warning others not to restrict their diets, she said: ‘Honestly I would say never do it. Eating disorders really take your life away from you, you’re essentially married to your eating disorder. It really takes the fun, spontaneity out of life…It’s taken years away from me.’
She said at her worst point she was eating just a few hundred calories a day. She added: ‘I had extreme anxiety, I was super depressed and having terrible digestive issues.
‘When this first started I lost 40lbs in five months and that’s where it first started. I was 19 when that happened. I’ve had an eating disorder since I was 12 but at 19 is when it got extreme.’
Alex said although her mother and sister knew about her illness she was ‘so in denial’ and saw numerous doctors and gastroenterologists.
She added: ‘I was trying to get answers that weren’t there…I recently realized it’s my eating disorder the whole time masking itself.’
Since making positive steps towards her recovery, she said her energy levels have improved and that she has been able to rekindle her passion for working out and fitness.
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Self-help: Last year Alex, pictured left four weeks ago and right five weeks ago, started using Instagram to document her fight against the disorder
Honest: In her first post, pictured, from more than a year ago, she said ‘I may look like I was in shape but I am not’, adding that she deprived herself of food ‘for years’ in pursuit of being skinny
Strength: Alex, pictured earlier this year, said she uses Instagram as a way of holding herself ‘accountable’ to being healthy
By posting her struggles online, where her Instagram account ‘wonderfullywheats’ has 19,000 followers, she said she has formed a close-knit online community who help her when she is feeling hateful towards her body and encourage her to carry on fighting.
She said she finds it ‘easier’ to talk about it online with people anonymously than it is to share her struggles with people she knows and that she would not have made the same progress without it.
Alex said: ‘I didn’t tell anyone, I didn’t want to share it with anyone. It was easier for me to tell people I don’t know than it was to tell family members. It was easier to be anonymous about it. The online community has really really helped me.
‘There are days I struggle a lot with it, I struggle with the way I look, I pick myself apart but I post a picture because I know people will tell me what I should be telling myself.’
She added: ‘I love fitness, I’ve been an athlete my entire life, so I can work out again, I have the energy to do that. I’ve got passion back for that, that’s number one…I feel like I need a physical representation of how strong I am mentally and physically.’
She said she started her Instagram account in March last year because she was ‘tired of being so weak-minded and never being happy with myself.’
She said she felt like she was ‘in isolation’ until people started contacting her online with their similar experiences which she said ‘helped me keep going’.
It helped her to make a ‘big change’, she said. She added: ‘I thought if I made my Instagram dedicated to being healthy it would hold me accountable.’
She said it has largely been a positive experience that has helped her make steps towards getting better and that she hopes to help others through sharing her own issues.
‘For the most part, it’s been a good experience. I’ve had a few people write to me negative things but mostly good has outweighed the bad,’ she said.
Progress: Alex, pictured last month, said by being open and honest with her struggles online she has ‘come a long way’ in fighting her eating disorder
Positive: Alex, pictured, said she wants to help others who might have experienced similar feelings about their bodies and eating disorders
She said the most helpful aspect of Instagram is the the friendships she has formed through it.
‘Number one is interacting with girls going through the same things as me and having strong women around me,’ she said.
‘Most of them I’ve met through Instagram. Some of them I haven’t met, I speak to them daily, some of them have become my closest friends.’
She added: ‘I only have one body and I have to take care of it as well as I can…I have to consciously remind myself that food is what I need to survive.’
Alex said she has seen the way some people with eating disorders use the photo-sharing app to spread negative pro-anorexia messages but that she is ‘on the fighting side of it’ by using positive hashtags such as #EDwarrior #EDsurvivor.
She said more openness and discussion is needed on the subject because at the moment it is ‘all very hush hush’.
‘A lot of women are just expected to be a certain size but it’s not talked about enough,’ she said. ‘I think it’s more accepted to be malnourished than it is to be normal size.’
She said she is trying to get her body on ‘a more normal schedule’ when it comes to eating and that she hopes to start menstruating again and stop having stomach problems.
‘Mainly I just want to get my period back as well and my stomach not to have issues anymore because I know that’s what it’s from,’ she said.
In her first post, from more than a year ago, she shared three pictures of herself in her underwear, claiming: ‘I may look like I was in shape but I am not’.
She added: ‘For years I have struggled with depriving myself of food in the search to “look” a certain way.
‘I just started running in this pic too for a few weeks – all while barely eating! So unhealthy! I am determined to change my ways.’