Hello! I'm running the London Marathon this year for Beat, the UK's leading charity for eating disorders. Any donations you're able to give would be hugely appreciated. 

Beat is a very important charity for me. At 19 years old I was diagnosed with anorexia, kickstarting what would become the hardest five years of my life to date. Bulimia followed soon after - as it does with so many people trying to recover from anorexia - and with that came more lies, more secrets, more arguments and more fear.

I'd lost two family members in quick succession and found it very hard to deal with. Losing weight or restricting food wasn't a conscious decision I made one day - and what I later learnt from a number of therapists was that my mind had tried to take control back where two sudden deaths had left it feeling as though there was no control left.

I won't go into the grizzly details on this page but what I will say is things got very dark, very quickly and for a very long time I thought I wouldn't beat the voice in my head telling me to let it win. And on top of that, I had to deal with the prejudices that I did being a man suffering from what some people believed was/is a "woman's disease" -  including two therapists who told me as much. But I did!

I got there in the end and I'm here now, fit (questionably) and healthy enough to run this marathon. I owe that to lots of people and to services like Beat. I used its helpline at some of my lowest points, with someone on the other end of the phone or online chat always able to talk me out of the spiral I'd talked myself into. There are also chatrooms which provide a safe space for people to talk to each other when they want to connect with someone going through the same thing as them. 

Those, and so many other services Beat offers, rely on campaigning, donations and volunteers - so the chance to raise money for the team is one I feel very passionate about.

Please donate what you can, if you're able to, and let's help Beat keep supporting people who are trying to overcome the voice in their head too.