"Holding a fistful of my own hair, something inside me clicked."

Arwa Mahdawi was just 14 when her messy relationship with both her body and food began. She was locked in a suffocating vortex of adolescent insecurities, and losing weight seemed to be the only way out.

Writing for The Guardian about her battle, Mahdawi said it did not take long for her control over food, health and wellness to border on obsessive.

“I turned into one of those irritating caricatures in magazines; running five miles at 5am then subsisting on handfuls of almonds and smugness for the rest of the day,” she wrote.

By Mahdawi’s own admission, she lost more and more weight “until [she] looked disgusting.” But all was okay, because “the popular girls at school suddenly started to pay attention to me”.

And then one day it wasn’t okay any more. Standing in the shower, a clump of hair fell out and with that came the stark reality of her situation.

“Holding a fistful of my hair, something inside me clicked. I realised what I’d done to myself and, for the first time since becoming sick, I actually wanted to get better,” she said.

Mahdawi’s story isn’t uncommon, nor is the idea that it often takes rock bottom for someone with an eating disorder to actively seek help.

Just this year, Mamamia’s Mia Freedman interviewed Australian singer Kasey Chambers about her own battle with an eating disorder some 30 years into her life.

Kasey Chambers speaks to Mia Freedman about her experience with an eating disorder. Post continues below. 

“I just didn’t feel myself and I knew that something wasn’t right…I just couldn’t admit to myself that that is what it was,” she told Mamamia.

“I didn’t want to look in the mirror. It wasn’t an image thing for me,” she said. “It wasn’t ‘Oh I look fat in photos’. It was more about the control thing.”

More than that, Chambers admitted it took some time for her to come around to the idea of help. And something as significant as Mahdawi’s shower epiphany is often still followed by months, if not years, of hard work to rewire one’s thought processes.

She told Freedman that her healing process started with her listening and understanding what her psychologist was saying, but took some time for her to realise “what I needed to take and put into my life.”

“A lot of it was about triggers and how it makes you feel when you don’t want to eat or when you do want to eat.”

Much like the common thread underpinning both Chambers and Mahdawi's battles, before Christmas last year Mamamia ran an interview by Corrinne Barraclough who spoke to Olivia Soha who also described her struggle with anorexia as a war on control.

The 23-year-old from Melbourne said her obsession with food and wellness was born in the digital realm, where she had access to the most filtered versions of people's lives -- and naturally, their bodies too.

"I became highly aware of ‘clean food’ and it became an obsession. When I was 20 I moved away from my friends and began a strict exercise regime. Due to my obsessive nature, this quickly became dangerous. I wanted to be a little bit leaner here or a bit thinner there.

"Physical symptoms are the last thing we see; there’s so much more going on behind-the-scenes with eating disorders," she said.

Her diagnosis and recovery was also met with its own set of strenuous challenges.

"I agreed to see a therapist. After swapping through a bunch of specialists, I was eventually diagnosed with anorexia nervosa on Christmas Eve 2014, right before family dinner."

And, much like the others, it took a grave look at reality to see how much work needed to be done to get better.

"The most scared I ever got was the day prior to spending seven weeks in hospital when my doctor told me if I didn’t admit myself it would become life-threatening."

If you or a loved one is battling an eating disorder, Mamamia urges you to contact The Butterfly Foundation on 1800 33 4673.