Young Hero Alexandra Potter Shares her Story

Alexandra Potter is an incredible young lady. Without any prompting she sent us an amazing article about her struggles with Bulimia for our Peil Magazine so that she could help other young girls find a way to cope with their problems. The full article has since appeared on The Journal.ie. See below the opening paragraphs of Alexandra’s amazing story and a link below to download the magazine for the full article  

My name is Alexandra Potter. I’m from Clarecastle and I’m 16 years old. I love sport, training has always been on the top of my to do list, except for last year.

In October 2012 I went into 3^rd year at school. I was being bullied; I was very insecure and self conscious about my weight. I heard that if you make yourself sick, you won’t put on weight so that’s what I did. It started off just getting sick now and again but by Christmas I was making myself sick after every meal. This had so many affects on my health. My hair fell out, my fitness dropped dramatically and I constantly looked pale and sick. I had been going to county U16 Gaelic football training but I had to drop off the team because my skills and fitness weren’t up to standard, then my confidence dropped even more.

I felt I was never going to reach my dream of playing for my county like my heroes Bernard Brogan and Stephan Cluxton. I received counselling for a year with The Willow Unit. The counselling really helped but it didn’t put all my problems to rest. Because my stomach got so used to being sick all the time, it went into overdrive and I couldn’t control when I got sick when doing physical activity. Many times I was at club training or at matches and all of a sudden I would be sick without forcing myself to be, so I was put on medication to settle my stomach. Because my fitness was dropping and I wasn’t performing to my best in matches, it was getting quite down. I had to do something before things got worse….

To see the full article download our Peil Magazine here: http://read.digitaleditions.ie/i/304215