Eating disorder group fills gap

MARTIN DE RUYTER/Nelson Mail

CHANGED MINDSET: Sam Gentry, a recovered anorexic, is starting an eating disorder support group.

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At age 14, Sam Gentry weighed just 35 kilos. Now the recovered anorexic is starting an eating disorder support group to combat what she says is a lack of help in Nelson.

Ms Gentry, 21, exercised excessively and suffered eating disorders throughout her teens. She was beginning to develop bulimia when she managed to "pull herself out of it" at age 18.

"It was a process, but by then I had managed to come away from the scales and the mindset quite dramatically," she said.

"At the time I did have a Christian faith that helped me. I got to the point where I thought 'enough is enough' and I recognised I had the problem and thought I had to do something about it because this is not how I want to live my life. I needed to do something about it to prevent it taking me over."

Ms Gentry is now completing a sport and recreation degree at Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology and works as a personal trainer at Richmond's Contours gym.

Through her work she often came into contact with people who struggled with too much exercise and not enough food. She said many people had borderline eating disorders "but no-one around them recognises it because they're not skeletons.

"Often the sufferers themselves won't recognise it,"

Ms Gentry said you had to be "very seriously ill" to be clinically diagnosed.

"It's very difficult if you've gone that far to recover from it so we need to get people before they get there."

Richmond woman Yvonne Heatherbell, who has a relative with anorexia and bulimia, said the eating disorder treatment and support available in Nelson was "not very good at all".

She knew quite a few people with eating disorders in the region. Some had "ended up" in Christchurch's Princess Margaret Hospital, including her relative, who had come home after two weeks: "Things went straight back to the way they were" with no follow-up care.

She thought Ms Gentry's idea was a good one. "It will help parents and caregivers having support from others ... There's a real need for it."

The new support group will have two arms – one for families and friends of those suffering eating disorders and one for the sufferers themselves. The non-denominational group will meet at City Life church in Nelson at a time and date yet to be decided.

For more information contact Sam Gentry on 0274505940 or visit the website desirefitness.co.nz.