Defeating my eating disorder has undoubtedly been the biggest achievement in my life to date.

I say ‘defeating’ – and that’s very much what I identify it as – but anyone with the illness will know that it never truly goes away.

That’s one of the things I was warned of when I began my fight back against bulimia nervosa, which I had suffered with since a light-hearted comment about my ‘chubby’ body from a friend when I was 13.

17 years later, after huge health implications including messed up electrolytes that landed me in hospital several times, I was ready for this crux in my life to be gone.

It was not easy, but then I never expected it to be. After a few failed attempts over the years to get a handle on it, this time I really meant it after a hospital doctor’s warning that it could end up killing me.

With an extremely supportive wife and family by my side along the way, I attended therapies, spoke to nutritionists and gradually began to hack away at the feelings of self-loathing.

I kept positivity diaries, I upended my diet and I repeatedly congratulated myself on every small step, even if this was just managing to keep a snack down.

For myself – and every lived experience is different – getting into the mindset of knowing how important this was to those who loved me became a driving force to success.

What started off as their reluctance to ‘guilt’ me turned into them being my biggest cheerleaders.

For my mum, who I had confided my eating disorder in just a year into the notoriously secretive condition, she has been on this hellish journey with me.

In many ways, it’s just as difficult for those around you. Every day feeling that this person who means everything to you is putting their life at risk must be all-consuming, yet there are so many fluctuating rules on what you can and can’t say.

How do you support someone through this without applying pressure, without using incorrect terminology sometimes, or without crossing lines that could set things back a stage?

It’s impossible.

So when I found myself at a place where I could finally eat three meals a day and consistently let them digest, the relief for my wife and my family was palpable.

I can’t lie, I basked in their joys, their congratulations, their compliments and their pride in me.

Being called amazing and an inspiration was like nectar – it meant the world and still does.

Drunk on this, it was everything I needed to keep going and regain normality.

For the next weeks and months, I would either boast about how this week had ‘no incidents’ and receive a similar response.

Other times, a family member or a friend might tentatively ask ‘and how is it all going?’

I would be able to then give them the good news.

Of course, that can’t last forever and nor did I expect it to. What I didn’t expect was how alone I started to feel a couple of years down the line when I no longer had this excitable cheerleading.

It’s no longer big news, why should it be?

But no matter how far you get into a recovery period, the voices in the back of your mind, telling you you’re worthless, pointing out a roll of fat or encouraging you just to treat yourself and have one binge – it’s always there.

Sometimes, it’s simply apparent and dormant, other times it’s screaming into your ears and you can think of nothing else.

And that’s why a recovery will still always be a fight. The voice is often easier to beat down, certainly moreso than when it had you in its full grip, but it’s an undeniably hard way of life when it creeps in again.

So that’s where the relapse came in. Relapses are all part of the recovery process, as medical experts will tell you. This is especially true in the early stages and, so long as you get back on that bike, they are expected and not a big deal.

However, this one was different. It took just one bout of depression induced by my bipolar disorder to spiral. I naively thought the voice was gone, but it was back with a vengeance.

My mind was telling me, ‘wow you really DID get fat again, didn’t you?’ Whether that was true or not meant little to the demon in my brain.

One incident became many and, terrifyingly, I feared I was back to square one. Were it not for the understanding and support of my wife, maybe I would still be there.

What no-one warns you about is the battle that comes into play when everyone has ‘lost interest’. The novelty of beating the eating disorder is gone. Everyone has moved on, but for me, I was still there sometimes.

Recalling the relief and elation from others that I enjoyed at the start, I couldn’t dare tell anyone I was relapsing. I didn’t want to break their hearts.

My wife knew, but for anyone else, I kept up the pretense that this was gone, I was ‘better’.

If anyone would have asked, I’d have downright lied.

It lasted a number of months and I had all but given up until an epiphany. I don’t know if it was a sudden fear for my health again. Or the change in medication for my mental health that appeared to be positive. Or the desire to make my wife proud.

But something snapped again – I knew it was now or never; if I let this continue one step further, I’d be back to square one and, at 35-years-old, I felt I’d be in no place to start all over again.

I am not fully back to where I was and this is the first time I will admit that to a wider circle. But I am getting better.

That determination is back and the nasty voice is waning.

Most importantly of all, I still beat my eating disorder. A relapse will never take that away from me. My status hasn’t changed – I am in recovery. I always will be.

I won’t let a blip beat me and, before long, claiming that I am totally fine will be the absolute truth again.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk. 

Share your views in the comments below.