Mind

How The Edge host Megan Annear overcame bulimia and learned to love her body

Megan says she blamed her body "for everything" - failed relationships, not being where she wanted to be in her career, not being rich enough.

Megan Annear’s smiling face and quick wit can be heard on The Edge, seen on TV and on her own YouTube channel. Though she is a familiar personality in media, her body image struggles have been less public. Megan reveals her struggles with her body and her journey to self-acceptance.

“I’ve learned my body isn’t the enemy; in my teenage years, I blamed it for everything. I blamed it for failed relationships, for not being where I wanted to be in my career, I blamed it for not being rich enough. Everything that was going wrong in my life was because I was fat. I’ve learned that’s just not true, it’s all do to with your mind and your mentality. It isn’t the enemy – my body is who I am. It’s strong, it’s soft. In my mind, it’s fab.

It lets me do everything that I want to do. I love to swim and I love to go for walks and it allows me to do all these wonderful things and yet I blamed it for so long.

I had bulimia from when I was about 17. I grew up hating my figure; I did ballet and I was very aware of how I looked. I got a knee injury when I was about 13 and as soon as I had to stop dancing, I put on weight because I was going through puberty. So I started hating myself, making myself throw up. It finally switched when I was 23.

I was so done with being angry all the time and being sad and sick and tired. All my energy was going into hating myself, it was really self-absorbed. It all changed when I thought it’s time to start enjoying my life and all the great things I’ve got and the great people around me.

I worked on it, I worked really hard on not hating myself. There was a lot of backwards learning, it’s almost like we’re brought up to hate our figures.

We’ve got to be perfect, we can always work towards being better in some physical way. I had to unlearn all of that. It was hard; I’m 27 now, it took four years and I still have bad days, I still have times when I want to go back to when I was 17.

But I’m so much happier and freer now. I have an incredible relationship with my partner Guy, I have my dream job that I landed this year – and all of that happened without me being thin.”

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For the full story, and to find out how Megan learned to accept and love her body, see the latest issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly, on sale now.

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