TW for anorexia, read with caution ❤️
He was 17 and he was just so sick of the way he felt about himself. He weighed over 250 lbs and it wasn't healthy. Diabetes runs in his family, and he knew that he had to do something before it was too late and his health went down the drain. Louis knew that he always ate too much, especially when he was stressed or angry or feeling any kind of emotion. Sometimes he would find a bag of chips in his hand with no idea how it got there. Every morning Louis would wake up, look in the mirror and criticize himself for twenty minutes. He hated his fat rolls, his jiggly thighs, and his double chin. He hated that he got out of breath going up the stairs. He hated that he didn't have many friends.
So after a particularly depressive week long episode, Louis decided that he needed to loose weight. In order to do that Louis tried to eat less, which was hard for him because he was always so reliant on food. Basically, Louis would grab a banana for breakfast before heading to school. He would eat the banana when he started to feel hungry (usually around 11 in the morning). He skipped lunch, and would go home and eat whatever his mom made. If his mom didn't make dinner then he would also skip that meal. On the weekend, breakfast and lunch was skipped, because his mom was always too busy with the kids and trying to feed them.
So Louis mostly ate two meals a day, if a banana counted as a meal, which is good. Louis started loosing weight, after four weeks Louis was down ten pounds. But he wasn't loosing weight quick enough, so he changed his tactic a bit. Louis still ate dinner with his family when he needed too, but he would stop eating anything else. Louis ended up eating four meals a week. After a few weeks the pounds were melting off. After three months of that Louis was at 195 pounds, he had lost around 55 pounds since he started.
Louis still wasn't happy with his weight. All his fat hung around in the wrong places. So Louis changed things up a bit, and he started to exercise. He still ate dinner with his mom and sisters, but he decided to run around his block a few times every morning before school. He also officially cut sodas and anything other than water out of his diet. By the end of the summer Louis weighed 150 pounds. Everyone noticed how much weight he lost, and told him that he was looking great and healthy. His mom told him that she was proud of him, and his sisters didn't seem to be embarrassed to go out in public with him anymore.
That year Louis tried out for the X-factor, and his life changed completely. Louis ate more while on tour, he had people looking over him telling him what to eat and when to exercise. He had to look a certain way for the public. While the other boys struggled with eating less, Louis struggled with eating more. Louis wasn't used to eating three meals a day, even if they were small healthy meals. He was still the same weight though, so he didn't think too much about it.
When tours are over and the boys have their own lives for a bit, Louis would go back to his old habits of eating less and exercising more. Sometimes it would get to the point where Louis gets dizzy when he stands up from a chair too quickly, but it's really not a big deal because when that happens or when his weight gets a little too low, tour starts back up again and he goes back to regular eating schedules.
Louis never considered his lack of eating a bad thing, and no one else ever noticed anything wrong with Louis. But something changed on their most recent tour. Louis felt different on this tour compared to the last ones. He felt like he didn't have any control over anything, he didn't have control over what songs they sang, how to move around on stage, or what to say in interviews. And then Zayn left, and everything felt like it was crumbling down. In a sad attempt to take control back, Louis stoped eating meals with the crew like he and the boys usually do on tours. Louis spent more time in the gym than required by their dietitian.
