Girl driven to anorexia by mum's health obsession
Amy Tickner was just 16 and perfectly healthy - but barbed comments from Kathy Fox sent her into a spiral of starvation
Painfully thin: Amy Tickner
Phoenix features
As Amy Tickner grabbed a slice of bread to go with her lunch, her mum yelled from the kitchen: “Don’t put butter on that. You’re getting a bit fat.” Amy was just 16 and a perfectly healthy weight for her age... but barbed comments like this from her mum Kathy Fox sent the impressionable teenager into a spiral of despair and starvation. She was so desperate to please her mum that she ended up existing on a daily diet of carrots, half a tin of spaghetti and litres of Diet Coke. Her weight plummeted to six stone and she was eventually rushed to hospital. Yet, even then, she pushed away a life-saving drip... fearing it contained calories. It was only then that Kathy, sobbing in the arms of a nurse, realised the damage her cruel words had done. Today in a remarkable interview Amy, now 21, tells how she is winning her five-year fight with the slimming disease... with the help of her mum. “Mum’s comments left me heartbroken and pushed me to the brink,” she says. “But now, with her support, I am finally on the road to recovery.” Estate agent Amy and Kathy, a tomato picker, from Faversham in Kent, have agreed to speak out to raise awareness about the rising number of young girls who are succumbing to eating disorders. When she was 16, 5ft 7in Amy’s weight was a healthy 10st 9lb but she was already starting to get self-conscious about her figure.“Mum often made comments,” says Amy. “She’d tell me not to have pudding. I told her she shouldn’t say things like that. I hated my body enough without her drawing attention to it. “But Mum would shrug and say, ‘I’m only trying to help.’ She just wouldn’t acknowledge that she’d said anything hurtful.” Amy endured a stressful childhood and struggled to cope when her parents parted when she was eight. The insecurities about her body started when she was 14. She would sit with friends and flick through magazines to compare herself with the skinny models. And the more her body shape changed, the more she hated herself.
DEPRESSED “By the time I was 19, I felt lonely and depressed,” Amy says. “I began to skip meals and over-exercise and it didn’t help that Mum was always picking
at her meals and avoiding anything remotely unhealthy. But she was slim and I longed to have a figure like hers. “I felt like Mum might love me more if I was thinner too.” In June 2011 Amy moved in with friends, making it easy to cut out meals with anyone noticing. “I’d see how little I could survive on each day. I’d eat two carrots at work. Then for dinner I’d allow myself half a tin of Weight Watchers spaghetti. To keep me going, I became reliant on diet cola, drinking two litres a day.” And Amy’s obsession with food soon rubbed off on her younger sister Grace, who was then seven. “She would push her food away and say things like ‘chocolate is bad for me... it makes my thighs look big’. I was horrified. I hated the thought that she’d be scared of food like me.” By October 2011 Amy’s health was suffering and she went to hospital for tests. Doctors sent her to a mental health analyst, who warned she was at risk of sudden death and she was told that she would be sectioned if she lost any more weight. She was told to cancel her gym membership because she was working out too much and she was given an eating plan. “I lasted about three days,” Amy says. “I never heard from the specialist or my doctor again, which is how I wanted it. I wanted to be left alone to starve.” By July last year, she was at her lowest weight of just six stone. She said: “I had no energy, my hair was lank and I had a vile temper.” At this point she had shrunk to a size 6.
Amy Tickner was just 16 and perfectly healthy - but barbed comments from Kathy Fox sent her into a spiral of starvation
Painfully thin: Amy Tickner Phoenix features
As Amy Tickner grabbed a slice of bread to go with her lunch, her mum yelled from the kitchen: “Don’t put butter on that. You’re getting a bit fat.” Amy was just 16 and a perfectly healthy weight for her age... but barbed comments like this from her mum Kathy Fox sent the impressionable teenager into a spiral of despair and starvation. She was so desperate to please her mum that she ended up existing on a daily diet of carrots, half a tin of spaghetti and litres of Diet Coke. Her weight plummeted to six stone and she was eventually rushed to hospital. Yet, even then, she pushed away a life-saving drip... fearing it contained calories. It was only then that Kathy, sobbing in the arms of a nurse, realised the damage her cruel words had done. Today in a remarkable interview Amy, now 21, tells how she is winning her five-year fight with the slimming disease... with the help of her mum. “Mum’s comments left me heartbroken and pushed me to the brink,” she says. “But now, with her support, I am finally on the road to recovery.” Estate agent Amy and Kathy, a tomato picker, from Faversham in Kent, have agreed to speak out to raise awareness about the rising number of young girls who are succumbing to eating disorders. When she was 16, 5ft 7in Amy’s weight was a healthy 10st 9lb but she was already starting to get self-conscious about her figure.“Mum often made comments,” says Amy. “She’d tell me not to have pudding. I told her she shouldn’t say things like that. I hated my body enough without her drawing attention to it. “But Mum would shrug and say, ‘I’m only trying to help.’ She just wouldn’t acknowledge that she’d said anything hurtful.” Amy endured a stressful childhood and struggled to cope when her parents parted when she was eight. The insecurities about her body started when she was 14. She would sit with friends and flick through magazines to compare herself with the skinny models. And the more her body shape changed, the more she hated herself.
DEPRESSED “By the time I was 19, I felt lonely and depressed,” Amy says. “I began to skip meals and over-exercise and it didn’t help that Mum was always picking
at her meals and avoiding anything remotely unhealthy. But she was slim and I longed to have a figure like hers. “I felt like Mum might love me more if I was thinner too.” In June 2011 Amy moved in with friends, making it easy to cut out meals with anyone noticing. “I’d see how little I could survive on each day. I’d eat two carrots at work. Then for dinner I’d allow myself half a tin of Weight Watchers spaghetti. To keep me going, I became reliant on diet cola, drinking two litres a day.” And Amy’s obsession with food soon rubbed off on her younger sister Grace, who was then seven. “She would push her food away and say things like ‘chocolate is bad for me... it makes my thighs look big’. I was horrified. I hated the thought that she’d be scared of food like me.” By October 2011 Amy’s health was suffering and she went to hospital for tests. Doctors sent her to a mental health analyst, who warned she was at risk of sudden death and she was told that she would be sectioned if she lost any more weight. She was told to cancel her gym membership because she was working out too much and she was given an eating plan. “I lasted about three days,” Amy says. “I never heard from the specialist or my doctor again, which is how I wanted it. I wanted to be left alone to starve.” By July last year, she was at her lowest weight of just six stone. She said: “I had no energy, my hair was lank and I had a vile temper.” At this point she had shrunk to a size 6.