A woman who used to spend six hours in the gym and live off a punnet of grapes a day is now a beauty queen. Lana Kelly, 25, struggled with anorexia and bulimia for ten years, but has now recovered.
She helps run Miss Great Britain events to raise awareness and help others who are struggling with eating disorders. She battled bulimia from the age of 13 through to 16 and developed anorexia afterwards.
Lana claims her doctor didn’t take her condition seriously because she was still considered a 'normal weight'. While at university in July 2018, Lana’s illness got so bad that she was living off just a punnet of grapes a day and spending six hours a day in the gym.
In two months she dropped a considerable amount of weight and ended up in hospital on the verge of a heart attack, being told she could die. Lana then struggled with binge-eating, but has since recovered and said she was able to improve her mental health when she started competing in beauty pageants.
Now she is a healthy size 8 and is the current Miss Newcastle. She runs pageants in Newcastle, Durham, Sunderland and Middlesbrough - and wants to change the perception of them as "vanity competitions".
Lana, an events manager from Newcastle upon Tyne, said: “At my worst I felt like my self-worth was determined by my body - so I thought: 'If I get to this size, people will like me'. I’d wake up at 6am and workout and be in and out of the gym all day.
“The rest of the time I’d be studying. I became a shell of myself. Nearly having a heart attack was a wake-up call, but it was hard when the weight then came back on.
“But starting pageants really helped me recover and to love my body. Now I want to help others.”
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Lana had struggled with eating disorders since she was young, developing bulimia when she was just 13.
“If we went out for meals with family or friends I’d always be thinking about where I could then be sick or how I could then walk off what I had just eaten,” she said. “Everything was so calculated.”
Lana then developed anorexia in her late teens after she says a doctor failed to take her bulimia seriously.
“I wasn’t skinny enough for them to be worried about me, but that in turn started these thoughts that I wouldn’t be accepted in the world if I wasn’t as thin as possible,” she said.
Her health spiralled out of control and, while studying at University of Bath, Somerset, she got so tiny that she was wearing age 10 to 11 children’s clothes.
“I picked on a punnet of grapes throughout the day and would spend the day in the gym,” Lana said. “I became so skinny very quickly, but I was convinced I wouldn’t be accepted unless I was thin.”
But when Lana was rushed to hospital and told she might have a heart attack it gave her a wake-up call to what she was putting her body through.
“I realised how ill I was making myself,” she said. “I struggled after with binge-eating, as I was ashamed as I started to put on weight.
“But then I entered a beauty pageant and found a love for it. It helped me so much.”
Now a healthy weight and fully recovered, Lana went on to become Miss Bath, Miss Newcastle and placed in the top ten in the Miss Great Britain final in 2021.
"I go out to eat at a restaurant and I don't beat myself up about it," she said. "The pageants have given me so much confidence."
She has also started her own campaign in the hope of raising awareness and changing misconceptions around eating disorders.
Lana added: "People still don't see eating disorders as a mental disorder with physical side effects and it's about raising awareness for that. Already people of all different ages and genders have reached out to me. It feels great to help people and make a difference.
Lana is running her first pageant in July 2023 and wants to create her own events business.
She said: "I want to inspire women to put themselves out there. There is a misconception everyone who enters think they are the world's most beautiful person.
"Instead it encourages people to be their best version of themselves. That's the beauty of beauty contests."
You can follow Lana's journey at @morethanmy_body on Instagram.
