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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. 

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Everyone knows about the dangers of black mould, but what about its pal, pink mould?

The pinkish-reddish-toned bacteria – yes, bacteria, not technically mould – loves the moist, damp conditions of an English winter. And while you may have spotted it and decided it’s an issue for another day, one doctor is warning that it’s actually a ‘now problem’.

Taking to TikTok, Dr Karan Raj warned his 5.3 million followers that if not dealt with correctly, the slime, also known as serratia marcescens, can have some pretty icky side effects for humans.

Explaining why you’re most likely to find it in and around your shower, he said: ‘It enjoys munching on fatty deposits like those found in soaps and shampoos, hence why it likes to hang out in the bathroom.’

And although it is mostly harmless, the doctor noted that it’s best to get rid of it as soon as you spy it, so you don’t accidentally get it in ‘your eyes or open wounds’.

This is because any contact with your eyes can result in an eye infection, including conjunctivitis, which the NHS describes as an inflammation of the conjunctiva and eyelid, causing redness, itchiness and sometimes pus.

Dr Suzanne Wylie, GP and medical adviser for IQdoctor echoes Dr Raj, saying this slimy substance can cause ‘opportunistic infections’ if not dealt with.

‘Skin infections, urinary tract infections (UTIs), and conjunctivitis have been linked to serratia marcescens, especially in hospital settings,’ she tells Metro. ‘Inhaling or coming into frequent contact with the bacteria may also contribute to mild respiratory irritation in some people.’

Thankfully, for the majority of people, these risks are short-term and mostly limited to skin or respiratory irritation. However, Dr Wylie warns if you or someone in your home with pink mould is immunocompromised, you’ll want to take your pink mould situation more seriously.

‘In vulnerable individuals, prolonged exposure or infection could lead to more serious complications, such as persistent respiratory issues, urinary tract infections, or, in rare cases, bloodstream infections,’ she explains, adding that in some cases, it has even been linked to hospital-acquired sepsis.

With this in mind, people undergoing chemotherapy, organ transplant recipients or people with chronic illnesses like diabetes should be extra cautious around the bacteria, and have it removed as soon as they notice it.

Elderly people, infants and young children, as well as people with respiratory conditions, should also follow these guidelines.

Everything to know about ‘pink mould’

What is pink mould?

Pink ‘mould’ isn’t actually mould, rather a bacteria called serratia marcescens.

Where is pink mould found?

The bacteria thrives in warm and damp areas, so it’s most commonly found in bathrooms, particularly showers, baths, benches, sinks, and toilets.

What are the effects of pink mould?

The bacteria’s side effects aren’t typically too worrisome. However, if it ends up in your eye or an open wound, it can cause an infection.

If you are immunocompromised, elderly or suffer from respiratory conditions, it could also result in chest and gut infections, urinary tract infections (UTIs), and sometimes pneumonia, a lung infection, or sepsis.

So now that we know all about the bacteria itself, how does one go about getting rid of it?

Multiple cleaning products are on shelves that can help, but if you’re not up for a trip to the shops, this home remedy is just as effective.

The experts at Rubber Duck Bathrooms suggest mixing a slightly runny paste of washing-up liquid and baking soda in a bowl and using it with a scrubbing brush to remove the build-up of pink bacteria.

Alternatively, Dr Wylie advises using a ‘non-abrasive bathroom cleaner, white vinegar, or a diluted bleach solution’ and a damp cloth while wearing gloves and a mask to down the surface.

Once it’s gone, you can also do things to prevent its return, like regularly washing shower curtains.

Or, after every shower or bath, wipe down those surfaces and tiles in your bathroom with a towel or squeegee.

It’s also recommended to improve ventilation, which can be as simple as opening your bathroom window for 10 to 20 minutes after a hot shower or bath to let the damp air out.

And of course, you should regularly clean your bathroom and any other room with conditions that encourage the growth of pink mould.

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Shakily biting into a small spoonful of paella, I silently prayed that my partner, Piyus, wasn’t watching.

Even though we’d been dating for a whole year, I hadn’t dared eat in front of him until now.

I was too scared of spilling something down myself or getting food on my face and that he’d point or laugh at me for making a mess. A fear that I’d held onto for years.

As a child, other kids at school had started teasing me for ‘walking like a robot’, and I became self-conscious about how I came across to others. So though I wasn’t a particularly messy eater, I became paranoid that it would become the next thing they’d pick on.

That’s when I decided to give up eating in front of anyone entirely – even those closest to me.

It was easy to get away with at first. My parents worked long hours in a shop, meaning we never ate together.

But big family gatherings became a nightmare: I’d either go hungry or only eat foods that wouldn’t make a mess – like crisps, which could be broken up into tiny pieces. Even then, I’d nibble them in my room, or in the corner where no-one could see.

I thought I was just self-conscious at the time, but years of training has helped me realise I was suffering from Social Anxiety Disorder.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) estimates up to 12% of people in the UK are affected by social anxiety at some point in their lives and I was one of them.

It is described as a fear of doing everyday activities – like catching a bus, walking in public or filling the car with petrol – with those affected worrying they are being laughed at or judged by onlookers.

My fear came with all of those activities but eating was the worst. Yet I hid my problem so well from my parents that they had no idea what I was going through and probably never will.

Experts say that social anxiety often gets better with age, but by the time I was 18 and at university, things were getting bad.

If I had no choice but to eat in public, I’d hide away in the corner and only eat items that were impossible to make a mess with – like chopped fruit or pasta.

I received counselling through university, which helped a little bit, and the GP offered me antidepressants but never took them.

Things got so bad that I attempted suicide.

Around that same time, I met Piyus, who spotted my problem when I kept sending him away at lunchtimes. That’s when I confessed to him what was going on – the only person I’d told other than my best friend.

To my relief, he couldn’t have been more supportive and our connection continued to grow.

Eventually, after a year together, I finally let him take me on our first ‘proper’ date to a restaurant.

I chose paella, a meal with ingredients that would stick together so it wouldn’t go everywhere and Piyus casually carried on eating, which allowed my fears to quickly fade away.

It was a huge step and I knew then that Piyus was the one. However, it’d still be a long time before I’d ever feel truly comfortable eating in front of anyone.

At our wedding, four years later, my disordered eating was still crippling me and I had to get Piyus to distract our guests so nobody would notice that I was barely touching my food.

At my job as an optometrist, I felt forced to have lunch facing the wall at a nearby coffee shop as there was nowhere private I could eat.

One time at a pizza restaurant with friends, I picked at a yoghurt dessert instead of a main meal as I was so paranoid about eating slices in front of people.

Eventually, I decided enough was enough and paid for private Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) – a talking therapy that can help you manage your problems by changing the way you think and behave – in which I was set tasks to face my fears head-on.

It started with small things like going alone to a café to people watch. That exercise alone taught me that others were too wrapped up in their own lives to pay me any attention.

Gradually, my fears eased to the point where I was able to eat small meals in front of people, using a knife and fork to cut it into pieces first.

By the time Piyus and I had our girls – Sienna, in 2011 and Isla, in 2013 – I was able to eat family meals with them at home, but I still couldn’t eat normally at meals out or big family parties.

Worried about the impact my disordered eating could one day have on them, I became even more determined to do something about it. That’s why, in 2018, I decided to become a Rapid Transformation Therapy Practitioner.

Rapid Transformation Therapy allows you to understand where these beliefs came from, why they arose in someone’s life and then works on letting go of what no longer serves us and rewiring the neural pathways for better beliefs.

As part of my training, I had to have my own counselling and discovered my fears had stemmed from childhood – I never felt good enough and always wanted to fit in and belong.

I had to learn to accept that I didn’t need to be perfect and that we all embarrass ourselves occasionally. And it really helped to remind myself that, half the time, no-one is paying any attention anyway.

From that moment on, things got gradually easier and today, aged 41, I’m in a much better place.

I still have to push myself to eat things in a way that might make a mess – like eating a burger in a restaurant last year with my hands. But on the whole, I feel a lot better.

The biggest difference now is that I can go out to eat with Piyus and the girls and order what I really want to eat, not just what will make less of a mess.

Just recently, I even faced my biggest fear of all when I bit into a bagel in front of my boss and the cream cheese filling spilled out everywhere. He didn’t so much as bat an eyelid and I felt elated.

I spent years avoiding things and certain foods because I was scared of being embarrassed. But now I know I have nothing to fear.

Life can be messy, and for once, I’m OK with that.

As told to Carina Platt

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‘I don’t want you to feel insecure,’ my mum said, as she looked at me with pity, ‘we will pay for a hair transplant.’

I was only 18, which is young to be balding but the process had actually started a few years before that.

I had confided in my parents about it so that they could help me try to figure out a way to not be self-conscious about it – not to offer to pay for a hair transplant.

I was not thrilled about the prospect of losing my hair but more than that, cosmetic surgery was not on the list of things I wanted to discuss with my parents. It felt embarrassing.

I knew they were still paying off their house at the time so $10,000 USD (nearly £8,000) to buy their son a rug was out of the question.

After the initial outburst and insisting my mother to ‘just drop it!’, I gathered my emotions and said: ‘Mum, I appreciate the offer. I don’t want a hair transplant and I also don’t want to talk to you about this anymore.’

The first person to notice I was going bald was actually my sister, who was a hair stylist.

At 14 in 1999, I had a routine haircut with my mum when my sister said: ‘Kevin, your hair is thinning, you are getting a bald spot.’

Mum rushed over as they combed through the crown of my head, both attempting to assess whether this was new or a development that could be slowed or stopped. Disbelief was my first reaction.

Within one year, my mother booked a doctor’s appointment to see if there was anything seriously wrong.

A doctor that looked like George Clooney entered the small sterile examination room with a sombre look: ‘Kevin, you have an incurable disease. Androgenic alopecia,’ He let out a deep breath, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Oh no, what is that? Is he going to be OK?’ my mum worried aloud.

‘I think he will be OK because that is just a fancy term for… male pattern baldness,’ the doctor made a face to punctuate his already failing joke.

That was the joke – make a high schooler think he has cancer of some sort, then pull the rug out from under him. The worst part was how thick the doctor’s hair was. He didn’t know the life of a bald man, it wasn’t his place to joke about it.

I felt deeply self-conscious for the first time in my life. My mother wanted to do anything to make it go away and the doctor – who surely saw much worse conditions every day – wasn’t crushing it with his bedside manner.

He ran through my options – get a hair transplant, get on finasteride and rogaine (hair loss drugs) or go bald.

Hair transplants were expensive and were not yet as perfected as they are these days, while finasteride can cause early onset erectile dysfunction. But going bald? Completely free! No impact on erections!

After the doctor’s appointment, my mum would sheepishly bring up the hair transplant every few months, as she could see the process of my androgenic alopecia naturally taking its course.

The doctor explained that hair loss drugs are best to retain the hair you have and they are only partially effective at growing hair back. So, the longer I waited the more the thinning would become permanent – it felt urgent.

All of this was clouding my mind – I would’ve rather been thinking about graduating high school instead.

I went into denial for a few years. By 18, reality was setting in. I was reaching a crucial decision point – and that’s when she seriously offered to pay for the hair transplant.

In the ensuing years, I wore various hats: baseball, beanie, fedora. I got used to wearing them to hide my scalp, as there was less and less hair.

When I didn’t wear hats, the biggest enemies of my thinning hair were the elements – wind and rain.

Then one incident when I was 22 changed everything. I was out to dinner with some friends, with no hat, a perfectly arranged head of hair, and hair spray to keep it in place.

When we left the restaurant, the wind blew and the rain poured and by the time I got to the car my hair was a wet thin mess. My (poorly) but carefully covered scalp was exposed.

That night, I wrote in my journal: ‘I want to feel joy and comfort in how I look. Every time I try not to care, I start caring. So after years of worry and self consciousness and my mind being focused on my hair, I pray that by buzzing it off and facing my head, and not trying to cover it up, God will just give me relief and happiness in who I am.’

Sure enough, I went to the bathroom and shaved my head. And I have never looked back.

Before that point, I’d worried about everything from being attractive to women to getting cast in acting jobs, and – with hindsight – it honestly turned out not to make any difference. I’d taken control.

Looking back, I can comfortably say that going bald is much harder than being bald. Whatever hair loss represents, it is difficult to swallow; it brings up thoughts of death, aging and a general loss of attractiveness.

Not to mention the way it’s easily joked about. That was all a lot to handle for a teenager and young adult.

Embarrassment, discomfort, frustration – they were overwhelming for me. But in the ensuing years, I found starting stand up comedy a huge help.

It was cathartic to get on stage and talk about the doctor’s appointment or kids laughing at my bald head when I took my hat off. There is something that happens once an audience laughs and all that discomfort turns into a connection and conversation with the crowd.

After performing my show, Diary of a Bald Kid, I’d get many audience members say, ‘Kevin, honestly, you look better bald. I can’t imagine you with hair.’

I am 39 now and a happily bald man. In fact, I like the way I look.

I look at that journal entry from when I was 22 and I understand that young man’s fears, so I am glad to be on the other side of the process.

At the end of the day, what I longed for was to not care. To just like who I was and like my body for what it was.

I have nothing against hair plugs, transplants, toupees, hats, Rogaine or anything else. Let a thousand flowers bloom but, for me, what I deeply wanted was to be my authentic self and I could feel in my heart that I was not comfortable.

Lately, my social media algorithm floods me with ads for hair transplants, hair loss drugs, and all kinds of experimental therapies for male pattern baldness. They always begin with some sort of hook like ‘We all know going bald sucks’ – and that is true. It did.

But choosing what nature intended was the best choice I could have made. I learned a lot about myself – mainly that I have a really well-shaped head.

I can’t imagine myself with hair now either. My mum agrees – and is really happy to have saved $10,000.

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

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As I picked the photograph off the desk, my heart stopped.

There were seven of us in it – but I suddenly realised, within five years of it being taken, only three of us were still alive.

It was taken in the summer of 1989, at the end of an AIDS conference we had been attending. We had our arms around each other, all smiling and ready for a big night out.

The picture was old and a little blurry, but filled with life.

It was February 2025 and I was at the Bishopsgate Institute in London. I looked up at the others who, like me, were sorting through photos from the past 40 years of the HIV epidemic stored in the archive of the Terrence Higgins Trust.

In the calm and quiet, there were gasps of recognition of faces remembered, followed by a struggle to connect names, places and events.

We were young when AIDS began to devastate our generation – and all of us in the room that day had volunteered or worked for Terrence Higgins Trust in the early years of the epidemic. We had been fighting for our lives while creating a dynamic range of services supporting those who were getting sick and dying.

Now in our 60s and 70s, we’re helping preserve that history by sifting through photos, identifying the faces of those who led the community response to the virus and the prejudice, hostility, and fear that surrounded it.

So many faces which, unlike ours, had not had the chance to get old.

Many of us there that day had journeyed a long way to arrive at Terrence Higgins Trust.

As a gay teenager in the early 1970s, homosexuality was completely hidden where I lived in West Somerset, and only a little less hidden at the university I attended – Keele, in the countryside near Stoke-on-Trent. Which at least had the benefit of leaving me plenty of time to concentrate on my degree.

It was only when I moved to London in 1978 that I made my first gay friends, came out to my family and fell in love.

While I’d been a very happy teenager, coming out felt like my world changed from monochrome into glorious technicolour, vibrant and full of potential.

In the early 1980s, I moved to Amsterdam, the gay capital of Europe and an oasis of tolerance in an otherwise hostile world.

The bars and clubs were fabulous, but by 1984 the dark cloud of AIDS had begun to cover the sky, and I returned to London. I was angry there was so little concern about the growing number of AIDS deaths amongst gay men; and I realised, if anything was to be done, we would have to do it ourselves.

Terrence Higgins Trust was the first UK HIV organisation, set up in memory of Welshman and Heaven DJ Terry Higgins, one of the first to die from AIDS-related illnesses in 1982.

By 1985 Terrence Higgins Trust was able to advertise for two full-time members of staff. I was appointed office administrator, alongside Janet Green as counselling administrator.

We had two small rooms, rented by the week, in a ramshackle office warehouse, just off the Gray’s Inn Road. One room housed the Helpline and Buddy service – the other, everything else. Around 300 volunteers worked in groups focused on health education, social services, legal services, drug education, communications and fundraising.

The next eleven years were a rollercoaster ride of activism, passion, growth, success, failure, funerals, hopes raised and dashed, bravery, courage, determination, burn-out and resilience as we struggled to contain the ever-growing epidemic.

Then, in 1996, a new combination of drugs was shown to control the virus.  At last, we could look forward to living with HIV, however difficult that might be, rather than dying from it.

This was too late for so many people, though.

The breakthrough was announced in July 1996, in Vancouver, Canada. During that conference, Paul – the handsome, talented, man who ran our Hardship Fund – died in London. It was only eight months after he had first become ill. AIDS could be terrifyingly fast.

He was just 29 years old.

I led his funeral: amid the swirling emotions of sadness, loss and grief, there was also real hope for a better future.

Now, gathered in the Bishopsgate Institute that day in February, around the tables overflowing with photographs and memories, we are some of those who have lived to see that future.

In 2025, over half of people living with HIV take one pill a day. With that treatment, they can expect to live as long as anyone else, and cannot pass on the virus to others if their viral load is undetectable – even during sex.

The UK is committed to ending new HIV cases by 2030. Hard fought campaigns have succeeded in delivering effective medication to people living with HIV in some of the world’s poorest countries – although progress is fragile, as the recent freeze on US foreign aid has shown.

As we put the photos back into their folders, I knew this was still an incomplete archive of Terrence Higgins Trust. I imagined what it might feel like in ten, twenty, thirty, or more years’ time, when we’ve finally ended this epidemic and the stigma that so many people living with HIV still face.

We have come this far and achieved so much. One day we will be able to fully close the archive – but I will still remember the faces from the photographs of those we lost.

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

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