Life As An Experiment

York Sport Union spoke to UoY student and rower, Ellie Simonds - Gooding, about her struggle with an eating disorder, her journey to recovery and how rowing trains her mind as well as her body. ‘I was never really told about eating disorders at school. Then, when I came to university, suddenly I was aware of them and felt a lot of pressure to look a certain way.’ Ellie, who speaks so sensitively and openly about her experience with her own body image and mental health, said that her illness began in her first year at York. ‘Among friends I felt new and different pressures I had never experienced before. I felt I had to look a certain way and do things differently in order for people to like me. This is when I developed bulimia.’ Can you tell us more about the moment when your habits began to negatively change? I became completely obsessive over calorie counting, especially after I downloaded the My Fitness Pal app. Suddenly, I was able to see not only how many calories I w...

Yes  I was bullied, yes it affected me, but no way in hell nearly as much as the effect that one stupid app had on my life.  I’m tall, active and a fairly reserved person, which is very different I now note, to unconfident.  Of course  I was going to weigh more than those around me, (not lying about my height!). I was never really that  self conscious  or worried about how I looked to other people; I was happy .  In April 2017 I downloaded  MyFitness  Pal and this ended up being the catalyst of a period, which is safe to say, looking back on now was the worst period of my life.  Prior to downloading it I was very easy come, easy go. I’ve definitely recognised there were issues regarding disordered  eating  but I was blissfully unaware of what was to come.  The main thing I used  MyFitness  Pal was, to begin with, see how many calories I consumed because, as I recall telling my Mum, I was ‘curious...