OLIVIA Newton-John has vowed to nurse her anorexic daughter back to health following years of family heartache.
The Grease star is deeply concerned for her only child Chloe Lattanzi, 21, who said her eating problems started when Olivia, 59, fell desperately ill with breast cancer 15 years ago.
But Chloe’s eating disorder spiralled out of control 18 months ago when her mother’s long-term boyfriend, Patrick McDermott, disappeared during a fishing trip and hasn’t been seen since.
Chloe said: “I’ve gone through an eating disorder. I don’t hide that. It’s nothing I’m ashamed of. Everything happens for a reason.”
She kept her anorexia secret from her famous mother for two years. Devastated Olivia said: “Did I notice? Yes. I was obviously very concerned and worried. Eating disorders are usually nothing to do with food. Parents need to be with their child to see them through it. All the therapists in the world can’t help if the parents aren’t present, loving and pro-active.” (more…)
Aimee Liu, the author of over 10 books, spoke with me recently about her new work, Gaining: The Truth About Life After Eating Disorders (Warner Books, 2007), and how her life with anorexia impacted the words within.
Kelly Jad’on: Why the title, Gaining?
Aimee Liu: That is the word which strikes fear and loathing in the hearts of those with eating disorders. It is associated with gaining fat. It has richer meanings, though. Gaining pleasure, gaining independence, gaining confidence. All of these appetites are connected. To gain freedom from eating disorders, you have to gain in power and maturity. This is central to recovery from eating disorders.
In our culture, women are told implicitly to be afraid of gaining weight both in pounds and purpose; a lot of women portrayed as celebrities or in fashion magazines are encouraged to remain in a state of immature adolescence. The unspoken message has long been that an “ideal†woman is a perennial child whose sole value and responsibility is to look cute. But today, with the creation of Size Zero clothing, the message is even worse. Now the “perfect†woman is a zero – in other words, nonexistent.
Aimee, where did the anorexia begin? How old were you when you began losing or wasting?
Wasting has multiple meanings related to one’s life and body. I originally began dieting in 7th grade. I developed what is now considered true symptoms of an eating disorder in the 8th grade. That was back in the 1960s, when few were diagnosed. I was obsessive, and at 5’6â€, remained below 100 lbs until college, around age 19-20.
I was never as severe as some anorexics, near death; I maintained a weight that was too low. Like a vast majority who hover on the brink of anorexia, the real damage is psychological. (more…)
A centre of excellence to treat a growing number of patients with eating disorders has been relaunched in Yorkshire as experts warn more young people than ever are in need of specialist care.
Chief Medical Officer Professor Sir Liam Donaldson officially marked the landmark at the Yorkshire Centre for Eating Disorders in Seacroft, Leeds.
The number of inpatient beds at the centre is being increased from 16 to 19 as it deals with an increasing number of referrals of seriously ill patients from across the North of England and further afield, treating as many as 200 people a year.
A link-up with the world-leading service provided at St George’s Hospital in London is also enhancing expertise and leading to new research into problems caused by anorexia nervosa and severe bulimia.
Doctors fear increasing pressures on both sexes are leading to more cases amid evidence one in five young women aged 14-30 now have eating binges, one in 20 have bulimia and one per cent are anorexic. A massive 80 per cent believe they are overweight while even girls as young as nine or 10 view their bodies in disparaging terms.
There are also signs more boys are suffering disorders. About 10 per cent of patients treated in Leeds are male. (more…)
Doctors have been issued with controversial new guidelines which spell out for the first time when they are legally allowed to force-feed anorexic patients close to death.
The rules state that if two doctors believe an anorexic patient is mentally ill and in danger of dying, the patient can be sedated and tube-fed against their will.
The new Scottish guidelines, issued by the Mental Welfare Commission, also allow dangerously underweight children to be force-fed against the wishes of their parents.
Anorexia affects a growing number of Scots and there has been severe criticism of the lack of specialist services. Scotland on Sunday can reveal that each year around 30 patients are already tube-fed without consent north of the Border.
The practice is allowed under existing mental health laws, but until now there has been no specific guidance on when and how anorexic patients should be force-fed, leaving medics vulnerable to compensation claims.
Patients’ groups last night expressed concern about the guidelines because they fear doctors will be more likely to resort to force-feeding rather than trying to persuade patients to consent to treatment.
But Dr Flora Sinclair, medical officer for the Mental Welfare Commission, said they wanted to ensure the practice was only carried out as a last resort and under strict criteria.
Patients who become extremely ill as a result of their eating disorder need to be kept alive by artificial means, such as a tube inserted into the nose or stomach which gives the body vital nutrients. (more…)
Without their parents’ knowledge, many adolescents with diagnosed eating disorders are visiting Web sites that encourage anorexia and bulimia, according to a study in the journal Pediatrics last month.
“Parents of pro-eating-disorder Web site users were more likely to know about these sites†– which provide “thinspiration†(images of extremely thin women) and reinforce disordered eating habits – than other parents, said Rebecka Peebles, one of the study’s authors and an instructor in adolescent medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine. “Still, over half the parents of these pro-eating-disorder Web site users didn’t know their own kids were on these sites.†(more…)
The struggle with anorexia is a long way from the glamour of catwalks, fashion glossies and the latest diet. Two men talk about the women they love for whom ‘thin’ is a constant state of mind
It’s hard to say whether, if Grace had been bigger, I would still have found her attractive. You can never know that kind of thing. But her slimness wasn’t part of my initial attraction to her. I wasn’t thinking, ‘Slim girl – great!’ It was more about our connection. I don’t think Grace was very thin when I first met her, and I don’t think her size has really changed since then. Physically she had recovered from anorexia while at university. The psychological part is a longer recovery process and I met her during this time, when she had just moved from university to London, and was in her first week of a new job. She wasn’t comfortable with changing her environment or disrupting her control or routine; it wasn’t an easy transition for her.
But I would say she was still recovering for the first year we were together. We met at a work party – she was 23 and on the graduate scheme for an advertising agency; I was 24 and worked for a media agency in the same London building. We got talking and found we knew some of the same people. Grace called me the next day to arrange another meeting that weekend, and a month later she was my girlfriend. On our second date – over dinner in a restaurant – Grace told me: ‘There’s something you need to know. I was anorexic, but I’m better now.’ I didn’t really understand what eating disorders were all about. I don’t think I would have known at all, unless she had told me, at least not for a couple of months. I might have asked her why she needed to diet, because she was very slim, but I never thought of her as too thin. Every woman seems to be on a diet and think she is too fat! As soon as Grace told me, I was very conscious of looking out for signs that she was controlling her diet. I looked to see if she had finished her plate, but there was nothing really obvious. No one else would have noticed.
I read Grace’s book [Thin, published by Penguin, which details her experience of anorexia], and there’s a section where Grace says she felt she had to tell me this secret, even though she’d only just met me. She wrote that she didn’t want to spend too much time in the loo, because I’d probably think she was being sick. That’s exactly what I was thinking! Being sick after eating is, of course, a different eating disorder altogether, but I didn’t really know that then. For a few weeks after she told me, I kept an eye on her – seeing if she went to the toilet during a meal, that sort of thing. But as I got to know more about how Grace was actually feeling and the history of it, and how far she had come from where she was, I got less concerned. Grace has actually never binged in the time I’ve known her. (more…)
Their views on food and body image could not be more different: Susannah Jowitt is the author of Fat, So?, which celebrates larger women. Candida Crewe wrote Eating Myself about her battle with anorexia and bulimia.
So what happened when they met?
Susannah Jowitt, 38, is 5ft 7in, weighs 14 stone and is a size 16 to 18.
She lives in West London with her husband Anthony and children Adelaide, five, and Winston, three. Susannah says: When I was 14, I nicked two pieces of bread from the middle of a new loaf of Hovis, then carefully re-sealed the bag with that fiddly piece of sticky yellow tape to escape detection.
Such extraordinary attention to detail was all in vain. My mother had counted the number of slices in the loaf and confronted me with my crime.
It was at that moment that I should have realised all was not well in our family’s Garden of Eating. How many parents count the slices in a loaf?
Such elaborate surveillance was necessary because I was, apparently, a Fat Child and needed to diet. My brother, on the other hand, was a Thin Child, so he was allowed sweets after tea (that’s how I remember it, anyway).
My parents yo-yoed between being people who loved their food (my mother was a truly great cook) and people who paid for their love of food by eating grapefruit. I inherited their greediness but, to my mother’s frustration, I missed out on the guilt gene.
Looking back at photos of myself as an adolescent, I wasn’t even particularly big – sturdy, yes, and with the same frame as my mum, who, by that time, was fat – but certainly nothing to worry about. But worry she did. (more…)
Dec. 18, 2006 (Newsweek)
If a food craving strikes, try a manicure to “keep your hands occupied.”
This kind of tip is common fare on pro-”ana” (anorexia) and pro-”mia” (bulimia) Web sites. Well intended or not, they’re not “benign,” says Dr. Rebecka Peebles of Stanford University, coauthor of “Surfing for Thinness,” published in Pediatrics last week. Stanford researchers surveyed patients treated for eating disorders, ages 10 to 22, and found that users of pro-eating-disorder sites were sick longer. And 96 percent of them reported learning new tips for weight loss or purging; 69 percent said they used them.
The sites tend to gloss over bad news: people with anorexia are 56 times more likely than their peers to commit suicide. (And they’re not broadcasting the November anorexia-related death of Brazilian model Ana Carolina Reston.)
Sites deny being harmful, saying they provide a community for those with eating disorders. The term “pro-ana” is broadly used, and sites vary greatly. “We offer them support, saying, ‘It will be. Continue going to your doctor’,” says five-foot, 89-pound proana.us owner Anna Robbins.
In November, the Academy for Eating Disorders suggested a mandatory warning statement: “Warning: anorexia nervosa is a potentially deadly illness. The site you are about to enter provides material that may be detrimental to your health.”
LONDON (Reuters) – Marg Oaten’s daughter was a happy, healthy girl who loved table tennis and drama until at the age of 10 she developed anorexia. Twelve years on she is still fighting the illness, which almost killed her.
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“I was absolutely distraught,” said Oaten, 54. “It is the worst thing in the world to know your daughter might die.”
At her darkest point, Oaten said her daughter existed on five flakes of cereal a day, washed down with a mouthful of water.
Children as young as seven can suffer from eating disorders. The illness also afflicts older women as well as men and boys, though it is most common in young women, health experts say.
In Britain, about five to ten percent of women aged 14 to 24 suffer from some form of eating disorder. The ratio falls to 1 percent for the whole female population, said Professor Janet Treasure, head of the eating disorders service and research unit at King’s College London.
Bulimia nervosa, when a person binges and vomits, is two to five times more common than anorexia nervosa, when someone restricts their intake of food and drink, she said.
Both psychiatric disorders, can be fatal — two models from Latin America died this year after becoming anorexic — or cause permanent health defects such as brittle bones and infertility. (more…)
I was watchin for some thinspiration videos and I’ve found this.
I hope it helps you.
Some of the comments in youtube are amazing:
Great video kat! It makes me sad to think about what I’m doing to my body, but I can’t say it’s being done in ignorance. The pictures were very powerful and a more honest look at what our society glamourizes.
I had no idea that Terry Schiavo’s bulimia caused her vegetative state… and I recovered from bulimia. Good job, the video was amazing.
I was searching for extreme ways to lose weight and become anorexic because I thought I was a fat stubby chubby. But then I saw your videos and said to myself, “Heyyyy. This shirt isn’t a large. It IS a medium. Aha!” You should go public with this information. <3 <3 <3
Thank you, very much for showing the true side,my councelors and theropist all seem to try to candy coat (no pune intended) the truth of my disorder, you are a really blessing, and a help, I will refer back to your videos often, if you don’t mind.
Thank you for these videos so much. The diaper part made me cry….I get so angry at people who try and make eating disorders seem glamerous, meanwhile I have woken up to find I cant control my bowels from laxative abuse. Soooo glamerous and fun. You have some majoy guts to post these and know you are very appreciated and making a huge difference.
I hope that THESE images are burned into the minds of suffering anorexics and bulemics. These are the kinds of things that show the REAL truth about “Thinspiration”!! Excellent job! I really like it that you showed the “families of” too. I heartily agree with kelsarob’s comment.
The ONLY (th)inspiration that we should be looking at are you and your messages. This video brought tears to me when the casket and the family was around. I had almost died and my family was devistated enough from that trauma. Again Thanks a LOT. I love you kat.
The Grease star is deeply concerned for her only child Chloe Lattanzi, 21, who said her eating problems started when Olivia, 59, fell desperately ill with breast cancer 15 years ago.
Susannah Jowitt, 38, is 5ft 7in, weighs 14 stone and is a size 16 to 18.
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