FREEFALLING from a plane to face your fear of heights takes some guts. But then Lizzie Hill has had some even harder challenges to face.

The recovering anorexic raised more than £1,250 from her skydive last month in aid of Beat, a charity which supports people with eating disorders.

Lizzie, 16, of Parsonage Street, Halstead, said: “Before I knew what was happening, I was in the air. It was overwhelming because I had a 30-second freefall.”

The skydive was part of a college project to raise awareness of eating disorders.

Lizzie, who attended St Andrew’s Primary School in Halstead, said: “I decided to educate people, because I thought opinions surrounding eating disorders were quite negative. I also wanted to help people who have suffered from them and raise money.”

Lizzie is due to talk with patients at the Phoenix Centre in Cambridgeshire, where she spent some time receiving treatment.

She is also a young consultant for the Children and Adolescent Mental Health Service in Colchester.

Her mum Sharon will speak to the Phoenix Centre’s parents group about living with her daughter’s illness.

Triggers, including arguments between her parents and bullying, led to Lizzie becoming obsessive about exercise and eating.

Many people used to think it was attention-seeking, which upset her. Lizzie said: “Before I became ill with anorexia, the first way I would deal with my emotions was control.

“I wanted to control every aspect of my life and had a routine. If something went wrong with the routine, I would be crying. Then it went into eating and controlling my food.”

Lizzie visited a GP when she was eating about 800 calories a day - less than half the recommended amount to maintain weight – exercising a lot and feeling cold all the time. She said: “Their exact words were ‘You have still got more weight to lose before you get critical’.”

Mum Sharon, who works in animal health and welfare, said it was a shock, but stressed the doctor’s opinion was not the view of all health professionals.

Learning her daughter had anorexia was something she never imagined she would go through. She said: “It is something you don’t realise until it happens and sometimes it’s too late because you have missed the signs.”

When Lizzie got to a crisis point she stayed for about three weeks at Longview in Colchester.

She was later admitted to the Phoenix Centre for about four months where she began to feel a lot happier.

She suffered a relapse later and was hospitalised in a paediatric ward, before twice being referred to a London clinic, where the approach to treatment did not work.

Children as young as seven and eight were also being treated at the clinic.

Sharon said: “They were always extremely intelligent children, high performers who were good at everything they did. There were people from all backgrounds.”

Lizzie has not been in hospital for about a year. She believes the key to her recovery has been becoming happy again.

She said: “I suddenly realised I didn’t want to let my mum down.”

Despite what she’s been through, she said her experiences have made her closer to her mum.

The teenager is studying for her GCSEs and is learning French at A-level and maths at AS level, after taking her GCSEs in both subjects early. She is also learning Japanese.

For more information about eating disorders visit b-eat.co.uk