A teenager who beat anorexia is set to publish a cook book containing the recipes that helped her recover.
Nicola Davis, 18, began starving herself two years ago, living on minus calories a day, causing her weight to plummet to just six stone.
But in spite of her illness she would frequently create tasty treats for her family, including pies, cakes, smoothies and risottos – which she wouldn’t touch.
Her jealousy soon got the better of her and unable to watch her family try her recipes without her, she quickly found herself eating properly again.
Nicola has now collate her recipes into a book aiming to help others suffering with eating disorders – and is now hoping to raise enough money to get it published.
Each recipe has a number of different stages – each one adding slightly more calories – meaning people can slowly progress towards a full recovery.
Nicola, from Box, Wiltshire, said: “It was difficult at the start, I was mainly just cooking for the rest of the family, but once I found more and more recipes I started to get jealous of them.
“So I started trying a bit and it just got better from there really. My own recipes got the better of me. All the recipes in there all helped me when I was recovering.
“You want them to be normal things that people eat on a daily basis but you want them to seem appetising, so there’s a lot of healthy smoothies and things like that.
“It’s all about graduating you into recovery basically, not pushing you too hard in a way that you are comfortable with it.
“One of the main recipes would probably be the apple cake I do. That was a recipe I first started when I was quite ill and that was a major turning point for me.
“You can alter it quite a lot. So you can alter the proportion of the apples to the cake. All the healthy things in the cake make it seem a lot better.
“Then when you feel a bit more comfortable then you can start adding custard, or warming it up, or putting chocolate sauce on.”
The full-time business woman first became ill in December 2013 after starting a diet in the run up to Christmas.
But her weight soon got out of control and she quickly lost over two stone – often surviving on minus calories, eating small amounts and exercising frequently.
Her illness did not stop her love of cooking and she would frequently create delicious meals from her family – tempting her into recovery.
She explained that she had now recreated the recipes which she hoped to put into a book for others suffering with eating disorders.
So far she has raised £1,400 of the £1,700 needed to get the book to the publishers, where she is hoping to print a few hundred copies of the book.
She said she feels there is a gap in the market for the product as most recipe books simply promote dieting.
She said: “When I was quite well into my recovery I just had a love of cooking because I had got so into food.
“I would go and look at recipes in shops and stuff and it just struck me there was not a single book in any book shop aimed at people with eating disorders.
“90 per cent of recipe books are all diet books – it’s quite shocking really.
“My family and friends are really proud – they think it’s amazing what I am doing. They’ve been really supportive.
“I’ll be selling it through my own website and we’ll aim to get it to the big stores, that would be the big dream and Amazon and things like that.”
Nicola, who also suffers from depression, has now turned her hand to art which also helped her on the road to recovery.
She creates pieces, including scarves and pictures, using silk and bright colours, inspired by positivity.
Despite being just 18-years-old she runs her own business, Nicola Davis Crafts, as a full time job.
She added: “I would like to be an inspiration, but it’s hard to think of myself that way because I do still struggle every now and then, but it would be nice to inspire others.
“I still battle with depression but a lot of it is looking at my past, which was really bad, but I also look back and think how far I’ve come and I draw the positivity from that.”
She is planning to donate ten per cent of the book’s profits to eating disorder charity Beat.
To donate to the project go to: crowdfunder.co.uk/
