A woman captured international attention after it was revealed she had lived off KFC and fries for three years.
21-year-old Georgie Scotney, from Portsmouth, had a Selective Eating Disorder (SED) from a young age and for as long as she can remember has only ever been able to eat chicken and chips because she was too afraid to try anything else.
While many children are picky eaters, healthy adults usually outgrow the disorder. This restricted relationship with food persists into adulthood for those with selective eating disorders, and eating is often accompanied by severe anxiety.
Every time Georgie thought about eating any food other than KFC strips and fries, she would gag and feel physically sick to her stomach.
The revulsion she felt about food only got worse with time. Until, eventually, she was terrified of eating anything else. What had started as just ‘picky’ eating had gotten completely out of control.
“Growing up I’d always been really stubborn with what I’d eat, it started off as just southern fried chicken and chips but it then got to the point where it’d only be chicken from KFC — I’d go there every day without fail,” she explained. “I was just never fed up with it, I loved to put loads of salt on it too, which I now see wasn’t such a good idea — I do think that it had a lot to do with me being scared of a lot of foods, especially sauce, that was the worst fear of mine.”
She would even go for days without eating if she was away on a school trip and for the past three years all the 21-year-old had been able to eat was KFC chicken strips or popcorn chicken with chips.
But now, thanks to a hypnotherapy session lasting just over an hour, she can finally try other foods – and has tried fruit for the first time in her life.
She says her boyfriend, 25-year-old Dean Arnold, encouraged her to cure her problem.
“My boyfriend was the one who put me forward for the session and I was very skeptical, I warned everyone that I was so headstrong and thought that I’d never be able to change,” she said.
Arnold wasn’t the only reason she changed, the couple planned on traveling the world and believed her disorder would cause problems.
“When we decided that we’d go traveling I knew that something needed to be done, we’re going for four months and I knew I wouldn’t be able to eat any of the food — I would have starved,” she said. “Never in my life had I eaten any fruit or veg and I’ve even managed to try a roast dinner now. I can’t believe that I missed out on so much.”
Watch her story below for more details:
Sources: Taphaps, Daily Mail, The Sun