GRAZIA – ORTHOREXIA

The closest I’ll ever get to Taylor Swift. My headline on her head.

Four scores and eight years ago (or just eight years ago, as I don’t know what four scores are) I was nearing the end of my post-graduate course in journalism. I untacked an advert pinned to the school’s noticeboard looking for feature writers to work for the UK’s biggest press agency, based in Bristol, and took it home.

Then I invited a friend over for dinner. This friend was already a journalist and much further along her journalism career than I, for she did not stop to wang about smoking weed and achieving nothing for a few years. While we discussed my career options, I remembered the ad that was stuffed into my satchel and I pulled it out to show my friend.

To my delight, she’d only started her own career at that very agency, and promised to put in a good word for me with the boss.

Thus, my career began. I was given a job at that agency, where I learned the buzz of a byline and honed my craft. I worked there 11 months and three weeks, and got myself several of my now best friends, my now husband and my now career. Best friends, a husband and a career. I definitely owe someone a drink.

It took a few years but eventually I got my first story in Grazia a few years ago. Oh boy was that a career highlight – my fave magazine! Wanted me! To write!

This week, that friend became the editor of Grazia (a big deal) and I continue to write for them from time to time, much to my joy. Okay, she’s a hotshot editor and I’m still wanging about (but not smoking weed anymore, hurrah) but I feel it’s full circle that I have contributed to her first ever issue as editor.

My story is about what happens when you take healthy eating too far. Never has a healthy lifestyle been more popular, gorgeous as all the new foodie super-bloggers are. Check out this week’s Grazia to see what happens when healthy eating turns into orthorexia, as it did for me. A delicate subject matter for me to open up about, but one that Grazia handled with grace and delicacy.

Head to your agent of news and purchase a copy of this week’s Grazia, gracias!