ANOREXIA survivor Nicola Bragg is hoping to establish a charity to support those suffering eating disorders in silence in Swindon.

The mum-of-two, from Moredon, was just nine when she developed an eating disorder, having spent her childhood in and out of children’s homes where she could easily avoid eating.

The 45-year-old spent many of her younger years fuelled on boiled potatoes and Dr Pepper, and she was forced to have her teeth removed after spending years making herself sick, wreaking havoc on her insides.

She suffered a heart attack in 2010 and is being kept alive by 20 tablets a day, or 7,680 tablets a year, to treat major depression, risk of another heart attack, low potassium levels and high blood pressure.

At her lowest point, Nicola dropped to a size zero, and one of the biggest wake up calls came when she was hospitalised for the first time in 2002 and her doctor told her family to look for a coffin.

Now Nicola wants to set up a charity in Swindon to help others.

“We’re calling it Feed – Fighting Every Eating Disorder, which includes bulimia, anorexia and obesity,” she said.

“It’s to raise awareness of eating disorders and also to support the people who have them. I also want to teach cooking classes, and teach people with eating disorders about food and nutrition.

“When you’re an anorexic you can feed anyone but yourself and you think about food 90 per cent of the time.

“But if anyone ever said to me come out for a meal, it would be the scariest thought ever.

“People say ‘just eat’ but anorexia is not something that you can just switch off, it’s a lifestyle.

“As soon as it has a grip on you, it takes everything in you to change. It will always be there, hiding at the back of your mind until you are most vulnerable. All we need to do is take control and throw it back when it creeps out.”

As part of her recovery, in 2011 Nicola started visiting schools to talk to children about her experiences to help youngsters tackle the issues before they grow out of control.

She said: “I want to make people aware of the dangers that anorexia does to them in later life.

“When people are about 15 or 16 years old, they are looking for perfection, but what is perfection? There is no such thing.”

Nicola puts much of her recovery down to her two children, 24-year-old Sabrina and 21-year-old Tom.

She said: “My children made me promise that I would do everything in my power to get better, so I put in all that I had.

“I do class my kids as my little pieces of heaven now because I have to stay on the good side of my battle to prove I can be a good mum.

“I get angry with myself a lot – I have completely damaged myself. It’s horrible now to think my children had to be home tutored because they were nervous wrecks and worried to be at school in case something happened to me.”

To find out more, visit Nicola’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/groups/203831006330278.