'Your all skin and Bones' (Anorexia Nervosa)

Member Name: Roxie_228

Product:	Anorexia Nervosa
Date:	20/12/02 (640 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: None that I know of!

Disadvantages: Can cause many illnesses, Extremely hard to return to how you were, Addictive dieting.

OK so at the moment you look good, but do you feel good? And will it stay that way?

The first comments made to me at a yearly christmas reunion, Roxanne.... not 'oh my your tall' or 'oh how you've grown' standard family remarks but, 'blimey your all skin and bones'.
I was rather a chubby child, but hey, werent we all? I lost my 'puppy fat' and i grew skinnier each year until one year i started to become a little too skinny.

I hit secondary school aged 11, reasonably smaller than my friends, i adored the comments it got me, at this age you would expect people not to think about their weight, but younger ones become more and more aware of how people rate the size of others and their appearances. After a while it became a neccessity to be the thinnest of my group of friends.

I chose a terrible time to lighten my appetite, pre-christmas holidays!! The time when everyone was being stuffed full to over flowing with chocolates and sweets, i hid myself up in my room eating a packet of crisps and one sandwich for lunch, my dinner would be taken and thrown away. I have been caring for myself for a very long time, not because my mum refuses to do so, but i refuse to let her, i had a thirst for independence. So lunch times were not a bother as i made my own meals.
Soon i had slowed down to one chocolate bar a day, (no matter how much i tried i could not tear myself away from chocolate). I would give my school lunches away and i frequently weighed myself.

By the time i was 12 i made the discovery that i was still 1 stone heavier than my boyfriend, believing this to be wrong i forced myself to lose even more weight until i was lighter than him.

In all honesty i do not completely know what led me to believe that I weigh the least and i should be thinnest, for some people it is said that television and newspaper articles portray that all famous and good-looking people must be thin, for me thi
s was not the case.
I could watch anorexia cases on tv and think 'Im glad im not that bad' when right at the back of my mind something was clinging to the thought that, perhaps i could get that bad?

I myself think that it is the amount of praise that we each give one another for looking thin, 'have you lost weight' is said to be a good compliment, but why say it? If it is true then that would be encouraging others to continue to drop their appetites, where as, if the said person has not lost weight it is an insult and there for leads them to believe that they should lose weight.

I think that lead celebrity roles in body shape and weight are :

Victoria Beckham for one, when i saw her for the first time in a long while she was on the cover of a paper, and her neck bone (forgive me i do not know the correct term) stuck out at a terrible angle and her cheek bones just made her look like a corpse.

Kelly Osbourne i think is an excellent role model, perhaps not in all aspects, but i read in an article that she gets hate mail for being the size she is, and is constantly asked questions about her weight, but she does not let this bother her, and for that it is giving renewed strength to many.

I have no evidence to back this up but in my mind i always think that anorexia is mainly located in teenage years, any younger and they would not understand, and perhaps any older should know too well? Having not yet reached this age i can't really comment on it!

I cannot explain why i started to eat normally again, if thats what i can call it, i still haven't broken the habit, i do not eat a school lunch i give it to others and eat a single chocolate bar a day, i do not eat breakfast -the main meal of our day so it is said- not because i choose not to but purely because i do not like cereal or toast and i do not have time to make anything else! I have as much dinner as i can manage.

Friends alwa
ys comment on how light i am, although i do now look average size, it took two years for me two return this way i got on a scale recently to find i am 7.10 stone at 14 and a half years of age. I do not know if this is an average weight i do not want to check because i do not feel the need to know. I also think i may have caused damage to my digestive system in the sudden cahnges in my appetite for i suffer from severe pains daily, my doctor has not yet pinpointed what has caused it but we are looking at my stomach and kidney areas, being at the young age i am it was extremely dangerous of me, and hopefully i will never be silly enough to attempt that kind of 'diet' again.

Its easy for people to say 'you look fine' or 'size and weight doesnt matter' but it is not as easy to feel it. Anorexia is dieting taken far out of hand, and i hope that now there is so much publicity on the subject, and many people can see the effects of it, perhaps it will deter others.

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