Five stone anorexic would sit in the bath for FOUR HOURS as she thought the warm water would make her ‘feel full’
Sammi Dovey, an assistant dental nurse from Southampton, was just 16 when a teacher made an off-the-cuff remark about her weight
AN anorexic woman who survived on just an apple a day says she used to sit in the bath for four hours at a time as she thought the warm water would make her “feel full”.
Sammi Dovey, an assistant dental nurse from Southampton, was just 16 when a teacher made an off-the-cuff remark about her weight.
The comment caused the teen to become conscious of her size and she embarked on a restrictive diet that left her severely malnourished.
After her weight plummeted to just 4st 8lbs, Sammi realized she needed to battle her eating disorder once and for all.
Sammi, who suffered from IBS and Crohn’s disease, saw her weight yo-yo as she was growing up.
Her mum, Denise, a 54-year-old firefighter, was often away with work and she was free to eat junk food.
But Sammi’s figure never bothered her until she attended her secondary school ball.
She recalled: “When prom arrived, I was 10st and a size 12. I was a little chubby for a 16-year-old, but I wasn’t worried about my figure.
“At the beginning of the night, a teacher turned to me and said, ‘You look amazing with some meat on you bones!’
“Maybe the comment was intended as a compliment, but instead of making me feel good, I just felt fat.
“That night, while my friends had fun, I couldn’t stop thinking about my size, and how I had to lose weight.”
Sammi cut out fatty foods and experimented with a number of fad diets.
Within four months, she weighed 7st 10lbs and had slimmed down to a size eight.
She said: “I couldn’t believe how much better I felt as I lost weight.
“But once my weight dropped below 8st, the amount I was losing slowed down.
"I soon realised if I wanted it to continue losing weight I needed to do more.”
In 2007 Sammi started college and with classes beginning later in the day, she purposely slept-in to skip breakfast and lunch.
She would walk a total of eight miles a day, and in the evenings she ate only one large Portobello mushroom with a spoonful of chilli inside.
She envied her younger sister Kim and in a desperate attempt to be even skinny she restricted her food intake further.
For three months Sammi ate just a single apple a day.
“Looking back, I don’t know how I survived on one apple a day,” she said.
"One throwaway comment made me completely self-concious and jealous of other people’s figures, including my younger sister.
"I thought starving myself would help me lose extra pounds and that would make me happy.
“However, I took my weight loss to the extreme.”
In April 2008, Sammi collapsed while walking home from college and had to be driven home by a stranger.
“After I collapsed Mum knew something was wrong and made me visit a counsellor,” she said.
“But, at that moment in time, no one was going to convince me that I had a problem.
“And I soon realised I could just lie about what I was eating.
“I told the counsellor and my mum I was eating proper meals at home.
“In reality I was still losing weight.”
By May 2008, Sammi, then 17, saw her weight hit 4st 8lbs.
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She could no longer hide her eating disorder with lies and baggy clothes.
That month, Sammi was admitted to Huntercombe Hospital in Maidenhead where she was diagnosed with anorexia.
Doctors discovered she had developed a heart murmur, was suffering from anaemia and her failing body’s temperature was the same as a corpse.
“I remember the day I was admitted to hospital so vividly, I felt horrendous,” she said.
“I knew I had to go for the sake of my family, but I was shaking as I walked through the doors.
“I was on eating disorders unit for children and of all the patients, my weight was the lowest.
“A couple of the girls on the ward told me they wished they could look like me.
“It made me feel amazing, and I was determined to lose more weight.
“But I knew I had to gain weight to be sent home, so I got myself up to 7st.”
Sammi was discharged after five months and sent home but she struggled to maintain her healthy figure and relapsed in 2010.
“I had figured out better ways to hide my eating disorder,” she said.
“I ate meals as normal, but afterwards I rushed to the toilet to be sick.”
In December 2010, Sammi, weighing 6st 2lbs and a size six, realised something had to change.
She was getting ready to attend a Christmas ball when a comment her mum made shocked her into action.
Sammi said: “Even though I was happy that I looked skinny, I covered up my skeletal frame with an oversized cardigan to stop people staring - including my mum.
“Before we left for the night I could see her eyeing up my thin structure.
“Later, when I arrived home, she was waiting for me.
“She told me, ‘If this carries on, I’ll be planning your funeral soon.’
"It really shocked me and in that moment I realised that she was right.”
Sammi got a job as an assistant dental nurse and was supported through her recovery by sister Kim.
“Kim went from being someone I was jealous of to someone I looked up to - I couldn’t have done it without her,” she said.
Sammi, now 24, has now been recovered for over four years and weighs a healthy 8st 3lbs.
She says: “Suffering from anorexia set back my education massively.
“However, I’ve now managed to complete my A-levels in evening classes and this year I’m hoping to attend university with dreams of one day becoming a dentist.
“I feel happy and confident with how I look now, and I’ll never go back to that dark place.”