No Thinspiration

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.”
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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.
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With statistics showing the rate of anorexia in London youth may be 10 times higher than the national average, a London centre is taking its message to younger pupils.

London Community Foundation has donated $8,000 to Hope’s Garden Eating Disorders Support and Resource Centre to expand its educational outreach, which includes elementary schools.

“The younger children are showing so many of the precursors to developing an eating disorder,” said Kathy Berg, the president of Hope’s Garden board of directors.

“If we’re going to do early identification and prevention work, we really have to go to the Grades 3 to 6 because that’s where these behaviours are starting.”
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