I beat anorexia to have TWINS AT 50

Christine Forshaw spent years battling an eating disorder but never gave up on her dream of motherhood

- JENNY ACKLAND, JUDY BROADBENT

Funny how one throwaway comment can completely change the course of your life. I was just 14 years old when a simple remark from a friend at drama club changed mine. ‘You’re the fat one of your family,’ the boy said to me bluntly. I was mortified.

Up until that point, my weight had never been an issue. I was 5ft 6in, weighed 8st 7lb and wore a size 10. I’d always been happy with my size, but now I felt I wasn’t good enough.

From that moment, I decided to try to lose weight, and I began to cut out meals. I’d purposely get up too late for breakfast before school, and the packed lunches my mum Valerie, then 41, made me would always end up in the bin.

I became good at making excuses to avoid mealtimes at home, too, insisting I wasn’t hungry, and as my weight plummeted, it became an addiction that I no longer had control over.

My dad David, then 45, noticed that I was getting thinner, and begged me to start eating again, but nothing anyone said made a difference. Gradually, the strain on my thin body was too much and, when I was 18, my periods stopped.

I wasn’t worried, though, and never told anyone, but in my 20s things continued to get worse. My weight dropped to 5st 7lb and I was surviving on an apple, a mint and a glass of milk a day. My parents constantly begged me to start eating properly, but I never listened.

Then, as my weight loss spiralled out of control, a throwaway comment once again changed my life, this time for the better. My best friend Christine, then 30, invited me for dinner, and while I just pushed food around my plate, I sat watching her tuck into spaghetti bolognese.