Quote

Our society's strong emphasis on dieting and self-image can sometimes lead to eating disorders. We know that more than 5 million Americans suffer from eating disorders, most of them young women.

The more people talk about eating disorders, the more people get the real story about what they're like.

In high school, I had a couple girlfriends who had very extreme eating disorders. Anorexia and bulimia. And in college as well. It's just heartbreaking. As someone going through it, it's heartbreaking. And as a friend who's helping a friend going through it, it's heartbreaking. It's a real, real disease.

When I was 19 years old, I came down with anorexia. I had it for about a year before it became public. And it had a lot to do with my self-esteem.

Eating disorders can have serious medical and psychological consequences which, left unchecked, can kill. Parents should address this issue and ask their children to discuss how they feel about themselves.

I think that everyone in one way or another has some sort of body issue. There's something about themselves physically that they're not happy with, that they're ashamed of, that they keep constantly trying to change.

In this business, there is an insane amount of pressure, spoken and unspoken, to be thin. If you look at some of the television shows, eating disorders become like a competitive thing.

Poor eating habits developed at an early age lead to a lifetime of real health consequences.

Anorexia, you starve yourself. Bulimia, you binge and purge. You eat huge amounts of food until you're sick and then you throw up. And anorexia, you just deny yourself. It's about control.

This might be the first generation where kids are dying at a younger age than their parents and it's related primarily to the obesity problem.