Some teenage girls want to find Prince Charming; others want to take on the world and be the first woman president.

Crystal Renn wanted to have a gap between her upper thighs like the models she admired.

• Crystal's diet became steamed vegetables three times a day with a protein shake at lunch, and sugar-free game and Diet Coke for snacks.
• When she went out for dinner, she would tell the server, "I'll have the lettuce."
• She joined two gyms so people would not notice how often she worked out.
• On weekends, she worked out four hours a day. She frequently passed out from exhaustion.
• Later she deplored how she looked in her pictures at that time, writing that her face had a blank stare, probably because all she was thinking about was food.

Crystal has overcome her disordered eating, and now has a successful career as a plus-size model. But the pain and suffering she endured in pursuit of an unrealistic (and unhealthy) body is all too familiar to the tens of thousands of women and men who remain in the throes of

and other forms of disordered eating.

Labels: body image, dieting, calorie_restriction

Posted By: Jane St. Clair