An environmentalist passionate about climate change and biodiversity, the Achill Island-native rose to national prominence when she stood as a candidate in the European Parliament elections in 2019.
The Green Party politician took to Twitter on Friday to speak about her near decade-long battle with bulimia and how it has affected her life.
TW : eating disorders
I lived with an awful, all consuming, get-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-to-weigh-myself eating disorder for the guts of a decade.
I tried my very best to keep it a secret although Id say some people close to me twigged 1/— Saoirse McHugh (@saoirse_mchugh) July 17, 2020
She said: "I don’t know what I thought would happen if people found out, but above all else I kept it secret...
"And doing that let it control my whole life, I had no confidence and spent so much time hating my body I don’t know how I got anything else done."
She said the services available to people in Ireland with eating disorders are "way behind where it needs to be."
The effect on her was severe: "I tried to get help a few times as my bulimia had gotten so bad I would wake up with all my limbs tingling and dead feeling."
Talking about her bulimia openly with family and her support network helped McHugh and she urged others to do the same: "Please please please tell somebody if you’re going through the same... It was like the power it had over me began to break once it was out in the open."
It is so worth it to feel free with what, where, when, and how much you eat.
It wasn’t easy at all to get here and for years I thought I’d never have a mostly normal relationship with food 5/— Saoirse McHugh (@saoirse_mchugh) July 17, 2020
