Starved Herself to stay YOUNG, now she looks 40 yrs OLDER

AN ANOREXIC who has starved herself for twenty years in a bid to stay young has been left with the body of an elderly woman.

Helen Gillespie, 30, began dieting when she was just ten years old, because she was scared of growing up. As a result she never developed breasts and didn't start puberty until she was 26.

But far from remaining childlike, the eating disorder has left her with varicose veins and the crumbling bones of a 70-year-old woman.

Helen, from Perth, Scotland, explained: "Doctors tell me my bones are so weak that I broke my wrist after a fall when I was 14. If I don’t improve, I’ll continue to age prematurely.

“For a long time I’ve looked like a child - but now I feel like an old lady.

“I’m sharing my story because I want to warn others that anorexia can take your childhood away."

When she started dieting, Helen limited her food intake to just 60 calories a day.

But the time she was 14, she weighed just four-and-a-half stone and at one point she was 24 hours from death.

She spent four months in hospital, but as soon as she went home she would starve herself until she had lost as much weight as she needed to be readmitted.

This cycle continued for the next two decades.

In her early twenties, Helen got her weight up to nine stone and photos taken at the time show her looking healthy and well.

But the eating disorder always returned and the weight fell off.

Helen used to blame her parents for setting high expectations of her. But she now realises she pushed herself to succeed in music, dance and academic work and ended up focusing all her efforts on the one thing she was good at - losing weight.

She explained: “My weight was something I could control, and losing weight seemed to be a talent which other people, particularly other girls, admired."

As she got older, she began dreading adult responsibilities, giving her more reason to starve herself.

She added: "I would rather have just stayed young and innocent."

As a result of her drastic dieting Helen missed puberty as a teenager and didn't have her first period until she was 26.

She's forced to wear prosthetics made for cancer patients, because her breasts never grew.

She said: “I never developed properly, so I’ve got a child’s frame - I don’t have hips and I’m completely flat chested.

“But I wear the inserts every day and that’s quite important because it makes me feel like a woman.”

Helen has spent virtually all of the past 20 years in hospital and has no GCSEs or A-levels.

She said: “I’ve missed out on my education and my rites of passage like relationships, socialising, friends, work."

It is only in the past four months that she has been able to live at home with her parents Rachel Gillespie, 62, who is a retired social worker and Bob Gillespie, a retired teacher, 63.

However she is still unable to bring herself to eat a healthy adult diet.

Instead she eats just 750 calories a day; a small bowl of cereal for breakfast, four pieces of fruit at 5pm, then two pieces of toast and a tin of baked beans around 2am - just over half of the recommended amount for a child aged one to three

Helen before anorexia

Despite her plight, Helen hasn't given up hope she'll be able to lead a normal life.

She said: “I would love to get married and have children. I go past a bridal shop about three times a week and I look in the window and look at the dresses and think ’if only’.

“I do want to get better, but I do wish that I could be a child again and not have all the responsibilities that come with being an adult.

“I don’t believe that I’m beyond help - but I’ll never, ever be normal.