Leeds student shares anorexia battle to offer support

Connie Inglis, 23, was sectioned two years ago and admitted to hospital as she weighed the same as an average five-year-old.

Now Miss Inglis has used Instagram to create a visual record of her recovery and has more than 87,000 followers.

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She told BBC Inside Out how she could not leave her bed at St James’s Hospital, in Leeds, without a wheelchair and was fed by a tube.

“I didn’t really care about living or dying, I didn’t mind,” she said. “I just wanted to lose all the weight. It had got to the point where being in hospital wasn’t good enough, the only thing that would have been good enough was if my heart had stopped.

“That’s the only thing that would have satisfied my anorexia.”

Miss Inglis said her social media story is intended to inspire body confidence.

She said: “I really love helping people and I think that it’s really important for people, those going through recovery especially, to realise they’re not alone in their struggles.

“No matter how hard it gets they can always get better.”

Miss Inglis, who is in her final year at Leeds Arts University, has struggled with anorexia since she was 10 years old, and has been hospitalised three times in nine years.

Miss Inglis told the programme her final university project is examining the pressures on women to be thin.

The Yorkshire Evening Post last year launched a renewed focus for our #SpeakYourMind campaign, which is calling on people across the city to help make Leeds mentally healthy.

Miss Inglis’s story will be shown BBC Inside Out in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire tonight at 7.30pm on BBC One.