By Izzy Hawksworth
A female footballer who was hospitalised with anorexia says watching her former teammates win the Euros with the Lionesses helped her beat the illness.
Maddie Blackburn, 23, was in hospital for her eating disorder when she watched Georgia Stanway and Ella Toone, who she previously played with, beat Germany.
She said it was ‘surreal’ watching them on TV while she was in hospital, which kickstarted her into recovery, forcing her to gain weight.
Now, Maddie is in recovery from the illness and is even back training with a local women’s football team and hopes to study football coaching at university.
She said: “I played football since I was very little so it was quite surreal watching them play on TV in front of thousands of people while I was just sat in hospital.
“I just thought ‘what am I actually doing with my life?’
“It was an eye-opener because I had been in hospital for around seven months at that point.
“I thought that I either need to help myself or I wouldn’t even up recovering.
“I think with anorexia, you can have all the help and support in the world but it’s you that needs to choose to eat.
“I think I needed something to motivate me but it was always going to be football because I played for years and years.
“Then I think the Euros changed everything really.”
After she started losing a lot of weight, Maddie’s mum took her to the doctors and she was eventually admitted to Cheadle Royal Hospital’s eating disorder unit in 2021.
(Pix via SWNS)
(Pix via SWNS)
The footballer was in there for six months in 2021, but sadly she relapsed and went back into hospital in 2022.
Now she’s started training with a local women’s football team – which is something she never thought she would do because of how hard it is to recover from anorexia.
Maddie said: “I’ve just started training with a local team.
“I want to start playing back to the level I was a few years ago but I think it’s going to take quite a while because I’ve not got my strength back yet.
“I think I’m quite shocked I’m playing again because I didn’t expect to be in this position.
“I thought I would be in and out of hospital constantly, even though I didn’t want that but Anorexia is one of the hardest illnesses to recover from.
“I kind of just accepted that was going to be me for the rest of my life, but I can say now that it’s not.”
(Pix via SWNS)
(Pix via SWNS)
Maddie has reflected on her time at the eating disorder unit and described it as ‘the weirdest experience’
She added it was ‘awful’ only being able to see her family through a window during Covid and that she felt ‘it wasn’t a very helpful environment’ to be in.
Maddie, of Whalley, Lancs,. said: “It’s the weirdest experience I’ll ever go through – unless you’ve been there yourself, then you don’t know how to describe it.
“You’re surrounded by other poorly people so you are being triggered 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“It’s loud and full of alarms and there’s people who are in completely different stages of their recovery – you could get someone who is due to be discharged soon.
“But then you can get someone who has just come in so they are really poorly.
“For me, it just wasn’t a very helpful environment to be in.
“There wasn’t really any visits during Covid, if they were any visits then it was just threw a window and it was awful.”
England star Alessia Russo opened up earlier this year about battles with ‘wanting to be skinny’ and the impact it had on her performance playing football.
Maddie says she related to the 24-year-old’s comments and thinks it’s ‘important’ that she opened up publicly about her experience.
She said: “Alessia Russo opened up not that long ago about how she struggled with body image and food issues in lockdown.
“I think she said when she started playing football after lockdown, she got injured straight away and that made her realise she had to eat more.
“It’s the same for me really.
“It’s important that people like her open up – it inspired me to open up so it could inspire hundreds of people to talk about it.”
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