Warning: This article contains sensitive content surrounding eating disorders
At sixteen years old, Emma Dransfield decided she wanted to lose weight. Over ten years later, she is still living with the effects of that decision.
“I look back and it’s scary I didn’t realise how small I was.”
Emma’s body image and eating habits all used to be topics she was embarrassed to talk about. Now, in a virtual meeting on a random Friday afternoon and having only just “met”, she tells me everything I want to know.
Emma Dransfield is a 28-year-old Leeds-based designer by day and a micro-influencer, running several recovery-focused social media accounts, in her spare time. At the time of writing, Emma currently has 1,905 Instagram followers.
Joining me over zoom from her flat in Leeds, she appears wearing a simple white hoodie, without a trace of makeup and sporting a smile that would immediately put anyone at ease. Her personality radiates through the screen.
“Hiya,” she looks at me still beaming and just by looking at her, you wouldn’t guess the struggles she has been through.
Growing up, Emma was aware of her physical appearance and knew that she was different to her peers. She was often called “beanpole” and “lanky” due to her height.
Her first negative experience surrounding her body came during her time as school. “It was a science class, I think. We all got weighed and because I was tall, even though I was slim, I weighed more than the other girls and it was just seen as some sort of bad thing to weigh more.”
At sixteen years old, Emma began her first diet which she believes began the decade-long cycle of restricting, binging, purging and over-exercising. “I did lose weight, but after that I just thought I could eat whatever I wanted and then I just put on weight again. I remember one day I was just crying in my room because I couldn’t stop eating, so I just made myself throw up.”
Binging can be described as ‘consuming unusually large amounts of food and feeling unable to stop.’
For Emma, binging was a very difficult part of her struggles: “It was eating past fullness and suppressed any emotion that I was feeling, but once I stopped, I’d be so mad at myself – even though I was only doing it because my body was starved.”
As a teenager, Emma did reach out for help and was diagnosed with bulimia and depression. However, due to long NHS waiting times she found herself giving up, believing she would be able to help herself.
“My mum found the letter in the bin… that’s how she found out,” she hesitates for a second and looks up towards the ceiling as if the answer was written there. Taking her time to answer, it is clear she is remembering the experience.
“I was embarrassed so I just told her I was fine, but I wish I had been honest with her,” Emma offers a small smile and nods to herself as if at peace with knowing the past cannot be changed.
“It’s kind of like mental health, a bit of a taboo topic that’s awkward to bring up.”
During 2020, when the country went into lockdown, Emma continued her habit of over-exercising. “I was so scared of putting on weight, I would do whatever I could to stay the same size. I would get up at half four or five in the morning and walk for up to three hours,” pausing for a second she smiles and lets out a laugh, ‘Honestly, I don’t know how I did it. Now I complain about having to walk to the gym.”
Dr Karen Street, Officer for Mental health at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, suggests that healthy eating during lockdown developed into an unhealthy obsession for many. This is reflected in the 173% increase in helpline calls to Beat, an eating disorder charity, between February 2020 and January 2021.
Despite this, Emma recognises her journey to recovery beginning at some point during the lockdown and felt that not being able to go to the gym was a blessing in disguise: “I knew I wanted or even needed to put weight on and the only way I was going to get over my eating disorder was to stop binging and put that weight on.”
Today, Emma uses her social media platforms to open up about her struggles and road to recovery. Her first post was made during Mental Health Awareness Week 2020.
“I had seen someone else do it [post about recovery] and I just thought, okay I’m going to open up and I was so scared to post it, but I did it and I got a really positive response.”
“I now get a lot of young girls messaging me on Instagram and the other day someone said to me “you are the reason I was to recover,”’ Emma says. “Just knowing I’m helping these girls, I mean that’s amazing.”
Like Emma in the beginning, many people hide their eating disorders and Beat found that roughly 1.25 million people in the UK alone are suffering with these disorders.
“A few years ago, I had to unfollow Courtney Black who runs a fitness account, because she was so triggering for me,” Emma explains while talking about restricting who she follows after previously using her account to look at fitness accounts and models.
“But in the past year or two she’s opened up about having an eating disorder, and it’s like if you see someone who you wouldn’t have thought was struggling finally open up its like ‘oh my god you’re like me!’”
The realisation that behind all her motivational fitness posts, Courtney Black had been struggling herself hit home for Emma: “There have been all these times when my friends would come to me for advice on losing weight and there was me, stuck in an eating disorder and dishing out advice when I was just ill.”
In between helping herself and now others, Emma shares her happiness with how far she has come, “I feel like it’s the first time in my life where I’m exercising because I enjoy it, rather than punishing myself and wanting to lose weight. Obviously, I still have bad days but it’s the first time in years that I’ve actually been content and happy with my body and mental health.”
Looking to the future, Emma is excited to grow her social media platforms and potentially become an advocate and “big sister” to people that are struggling.
Do you think you’ll get any brand deals?
She laughs: “I hope! We’ll just have to see what the future brings.”
It is clear that Emma’s transparency when it comes to her recovery are helping others, so brand deal or not, her account is worth a lot more than she could’ve ever imagined.
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