Son dies after 'diet pact' with mum leads to eating disorder

What started out as a diet pact between mother and son turned fatal for one of them when it was taken too far.

Melanie Brazier and her son Stevie made the pact to go on a diet together after Ms Brazier was told that at 101kg and 162cm tall she would need to lose weight in order to manage her Type 2 diabetes she had just been diagnosed with.

Her then 14-year-old son Stevie - who had Aspergers and was homeschooled - was also overweight at the time after breaking his leg in a motorcycle accident and said that at more than 120kg, he would join his mother in a health and fitness journey.

“He’d [Stevie] noticed on his hospital notes he’d been classed as ­clinically obese,” Ms Brazier told The Mirror.

“It upset him.”

Ms Brazier said the pair began eating healthy at first and enjoyed the results they were both seeing.

“We enjoyed cooking chicken stir-fry. Stevie was getting compliments and he was really pleased,” Ms Brazier said.

“He bought some little weights and started exercising.”

However, before long Stevie took the challenge to another level and evenutally entered into a cycle of depression, obsessive exercising, bing eating and purging.

By 2011, he was making himself vomit up to 25 times a day and was starving himself to death.

“One day he bent over and his T-shirt rode up,” Ms Brazier said.

“I noticed a roll of skin hanging over his bottom and his spine jutting out. It was a shocking sight and I gasped. He’d been hiding in baggy jumpers so I’d not noticed how much weight he’d lost.

"He became fanatical about weighing himself and lied about his eating habits.

“When he did sit down for a family meal he would disappear to the bathroom for up to an hour afterwards. I’d also wake in the night to hear his exercise bike going."

Stevie was diagnosed him with anorexia and bulimia.

“(The psychiatrist) told us he’d thought about taking his (own) life,” Ms Brazier said.

“It was like being punched in the stomach, hearing that. She wanted to admit him there and then but it would have cost £850 (AUD1385) a night and we couldn’t afford it.”

'Heart as slow as a 90-year-old'

After a failed attempt at staying in an eating disorder clinic, Ms Brazier said his demonds got the better of him.

“I was at the end of my tether. He was bingeing up to 25 times a day. I caught him standing in front of the fridge gorging on raw, frozen chicken nuggets," she said.

By this stage his body could no longer take the punishment and soon his kidneys began to fail.

“He spent two weeks in hospital and they were thinking of putting him on the transplant list but he recovered,” Ms Brazier told The Mirror.

In another incident, he was admitted to hospital when his pulse became as faint “as a 90-year-old’s”.

While Stevie managed to recover, it was on one morning in February 2014 that Ms Brazier found her son dead at 21 years old from cardiac arrest.

"I knew he was dead as soon as I saw him. Heartbroken doesn’t describe how I felt.”

“I miss him so much and wish I’d never started the stupid diet."

Ifyou or anyone you know needs help for an eating disorder, The Butterfly Foundation for Eating Disorders can be reached on 1800 334 673.