EIGHTEEN years ago, Di Archer, a former missionary whose husband was then Vicar of Highfield Church (Christ Church, Portswood), in Southampton, was thinking about a move into theological education when a phone call from a hospital in the United States changed her course completely.
The eldest of her three children, Jane (not her real name), was on holiday in Ohio. “She’d just completed her first year at university, and we thought she was having a great time,” Mrs Archer says.
She had noticed, earlier in the year, that Jane was “stick-thin”, but the first intimation she had that something was wrong was when the voice on the line said: “Your daughter’s life is hanging by a thread. Did you know she has bulimia?”
Mrs Archer recalls: “They were amazed that she was even able to stand. She should have been in a coma.” Jane had vomited so many times in one day that her body was starved of potassium. Her heart was in danger.
“It tipped us into the deep end,” Mrs Archer says. “The only person I knew of who had had any kind of eating disorder was Princess Diana.”
Her husband had to fly out to collect Jane, who could not travel on her own. “We discovered very quickly that both help and understanding were very limited.”
Inevitably, she says, “and rightly”, the NHS has to prioritise those people who are most severely ill; but that is problematic with eating disorders. “The later you diagnose one, the longer recovery can take, because they are addictive by nature.”
Fortunately, a friend at their church, Jean Hart, was a psychotherapist who was working as an eating-disorder counsellor. One of her own daughters had had bulimia; the other had had anorexia. “I leaned very heavily on her, and she helped us to muddle our way through.”
Mrs Archer describes Jane’s path to recovery as “a long, dark tunnel”.
Before her trip to Ohio, Mrs Archer says, “I don’t think she would have said that she had an eating disorder. Denial is a large part of the problem. She thought that at the worst she might be dehydrating herself. The fact that she came so very near to losing her life was a wake-up call for her, I think — or the first one, anyway.”
SOME years later, at a church mission evening, they were praying. “Jean and I thought: Wouldn’t it be great if we could create something, complementary to the NHS, that we could offer to that vast swath of people who have eating disorders and get no help?
“As a result, we created the community recovery course that my family would have wanted to go on, catering not just for the person who is struggling, but also for their family and friends, or whoever wants to come.”
Beginning with a pilot, the pair continued to hone, test, and hone it again until, in 2013, they published a course of eight two-hour sessions that take participants on a journey to discover: How did this happen? What is it? How do I walk out of it?”
The course is not prescriptive, she says. “It’s not advice, or counselling, or therapy. It is very much educational, but also motivational, helping people to think of reasons why they might want to find the tools to start changing their lives.”
AN EATING disorder, in essence, is not about food: “It is a coping technique, really, for difficult issues in life,” Mrs Archer explains. It may give someone a sense of control if lots of other things feel out of control; it may be an attempt to fulfil a deep-felt need, or a way to suppress painful emotions.
Mrs Archer acknowledges that eating disorders often have complicated roots, including poor body image and low self-esteem, and that catalysts can range from abuse, loss, or stress, to a comment that someone has made about a person’s looks.
In Jane’s case, she says, some of her daughter’s fears and difficulties with life stemmed from a car crash that she was involved in, aged eight.
The best-known eating disorders are anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder. “But more are being diagnosed constantly, such as avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder [ARFID], which is just now getting attention from the medical profession.” ARFID sufferers may avoid various foods because of fear of choking, allergic reaction, or a sensory problem such as texture or smell.
To begin with, eating disorders “feel like a solution to some problem, because, in one way or another, they make you feel better”, Mrs Archer says. “Then they themselves become part of the bigger problem. They can very quickly get hold of us, psychologically and physiologically, because our bodies adapt to the new patterns [of behaviour].”
People with eating disorders are hard to count. It has been estimated that those who have sought help from the NHS represent only one third of those who are struggling with a disorder. “ There will be those who are aware they have a problem, but don’t really want to talk to anyone, and then there will be as may again who don’t even realise they have a problem,” Mrs Archer says.
In 2013, it was estimated that some four million people in the UK were suffering from such disorders. The numbers have risen since then — most steeply among boys and men, although at present only one in four people with an eating disorder is male.
Eating disorders can develop at any age and stage of life, Mrs Archer says. But people are most at risk between the ages of 14 and 25, partly because of changes in the brain during this period. “Seniors, too, can be vulnerable, as the emotional challenges of older age can be overwhelming.”
Surveys on levels of happiness in the West show a marked drop in the 2000s after the first smartphone was launched and social media became ubiquitous.
“Everybody started comparing themselves with everybody else: there’s a great new word: ‘comparanoia’. Western society puts a lot of expectation on you to have a lovely life, and isn’t very realistic about how life actually is. And, obviously, since Covid, people’s feelings of anxiety have just gone crazy.”
Over the past five years, there has been an 84-per-cent rise in hospital admissions for eating disorders.
ONCE the course was developed, people began approaching Mrs Archer and Mrs Hart, saying: “It looks amazing, but we’re too scared to run it. We’re frightened of getting things wrong and making things worse.’” So, in 2014, the two women started training people themselves. With the support of Southampton Christian Network, they founded the charity Tastelife UK.
Today, it offers two days of training to run The Tastelife Community Recovery Course, three times a year (£450 for live online training; £650 for residential training; £155 discount on either for charity workers). The training is accredited by University of Brighton Health Sciences and OCN London, and is suitable for anyone with relevant qualifications, personal experience, or involvement in health, education, social care, or Christian ministry.
Tastelife also offers a preventative resource for schools and youth groups, Youth Track, which can help young people to understand eating disorders, to avoid them, and to respond if they come across others who are struggling with one. A specifically Christian faith-based version of this is available.
The charity will also provide training on eating disorders for professionals “and anyone else who is interested”.
One of the delights of the course is that it helps parents and children, people and their partners, to learn how to relate to each other again, Mrs Archer says.
Every parent or partner of someone with an eating disorder emphatically feels that they must have done something wrong. “We try to take that burden off people. There are always things we do, as parents or partners, that are unhelpful, but it’s never, ever, that straightforward.”
The course emphasises that the path to recovery is taken in “baby steps”.
“The thing about eating disorders is that they take over your head, so that food is the first thing you think of, whether you’re not eating it, eating too much of it, or whatever. It’s really hard for people to concentrate on other things. And there’s a lot of fear involved, which is why you can’t just snap out of it.
“Because it’s a compulsion, it feels like you have no choice. You have to retrain your body and mind into healthier patterns, and the best way to do that — it’s almost like fooling your system — is one tiny step at a time.”
For example, she says, for people with anorexia, mealtimes are often very rigid. “We suggest that they move one of their meals this week by a minute. Or even just 30 seconds. It has to be something so small that they can actually do it, and then, once they have done it once, it’s like: ‘Oh, I thought I couldn’t do anything, but I did that.’”
Many people suppose that once you have an eating disorder, you are doomed for life, but recovery is possible, Mrs Archer says. “In fact, you can walk so far out of it that you can’t really remember what it was like.”
She refers to her own daughter as an example. “Jane used to help out on the course every so often, but now she’s like: ‘I can’t remember how I used to think, or how it used to feel. I’m not really much help.’”
SO FAR, Tastelife has been helping about 300 people a year. Mrs Hart has retired; but the trustees have ambitious plans for the future. “We run courses online, but some people much prefer face-to-face; so our vision is that everyone in the UK should be within 45 minutes of a recovery course.
“We work with churches as much as with anyone else, and most of our leaders, though not all, are practising Christians.
“We see it as a fantastic opportunity for churches to go where angels fear to tread: to show real compassion and offer life-changing care to people who are not going to get it anywhere else. People are scared of eating disorders, which is one reason they get such a hold.”
They are open about the fact that Tastelife is Christian-based, although in every respect, they say, it caters for people of any faith or none. The course does invite people to think about whether they have a spiritual side, and, if so, whether they want to explore it.
“The course is about empowering people,” Mrs Archer explains. “We are trying to give them tools — do they need counselling, for example? Do they need a buddy or a confidant? One of those tools might be spirituality, but it’s up to them if they want to look at that.
“Some people come and say, ‘Don’t give me any Christian stuff,’ and we say, ‘That’s fine.’ And then, by session three, they’re like: ‘But you could pray for our daughter.’”
tastelifeuk.org