Anorexia Quotes

As far as stimulus from the visual arts specifically, there is today in most of us a visual appetite that is hungry, that is acutely undernourished. One might go so far as to say that Protestants in particular suffer from a form of visual anorexia. It is not that there is a lack of visual stimuli, but rather a lack of wholesomeness of form and content amidst the all-pervasive sensory overload. ~ John Walford

To rely on luck and confront a lion is a suicide mission. You have to be a 'lion' to combat a lion. Even a lion suffering from diarrhea and anorexia is still a formidable opponent. ~ Vincent Okay Nwachukwu

In 1944-1945, Dr Ancel Keys, a specialist in nutrition and the inventor of the K-ration, led a carefully controlled yearlong study of starvation at the University of Minnesota Laboratory of Physiological Hygiene. It was hoped that the results would help relief workers in rehabilitating war refugees and concentration camp victims. The study participants were thirty-two conscientious objectors eager to contribute humanely to the war effort. By the experiment's end, much of their enthusiasm had vanished.
Over a six-month semi-starvation period, they were required to lose an average of twenty-five percent of their body weight." [...] p193

p193-194
"...the men exhibited physical symptoms...their movements slowed, they felt weak and cold, their skin was dry, their hair fell out, they had edema. And the psychological changes were dramatic. "[...]
p194
"The men became apathetic and depressed, and frustrated with their inability to concentrate or perform tasks in their usual manner. Six of the thirty-two were eventually diagnosed with severe "character neurosis," two of them bordering on psychosis. Socially, they ceased to care much about others; they grew intensely selfish and self-absorbed. Personal grooming and hygiene deteriorated, and the men were moody and irritable with one another. The lively and cooperative group spirit that had developed in the three-month control phase of the experiment evaporated. Most participants lost interest in group act ~ Michelle Stacey

The reasons for Emma's illness and for her decision to allow life in, rather than die, are intertwined and involve the beginnings of her feelings of belonging, of safety and of competence to be in the world. ~ Carol Lee

No food will ever hurt you as much as an unhealthy mind. ~ Brittany Burgunder

No one could see the thoughts when the body looked normal to them. The voice wanted it to just be the two of us. It wanted to hide. If no one saw it, then no one would believe me.
No one would ask. ~ Rachael Rose Steil

If you put the wrong foods in your body, you are contaminated and dirty and your stomach swells. Then the voice says, Why did you do that? Don't you know better? Ugly and wicked, you are disgusting to me. ~ Bethany Pierce

In the addiction recovery community, we recognise that addicts can starve themselves of receiving social, sexual or emotional nourishment. Sex and love addicts starve themselves of a healthy, personal relationship and, consequently, deliberately avoid wholesome relationships with other human beings. We're getting quite deep now, but there are many papers and books published on sexual and emotional anorexia. I have also suffered from emotional anorexia. It's no myth! ~ Christopher Dines

Anorexics never have boyfriends ... That's one way to know you don't have anorexia, if you have a boyfriend. ~ Ann Coulter

yet still I crave the sight of my own hypnotic gaze reflecting out at me from the shared mirror of anorexia and bulimia, number to life and reality, existing only in my self-made tortured state ~ Carol Lee

Anorexia and bulimia seem to be getting much more common in boys, men, and women of all ages and socioeconomic backgrounds; they are also becoming more common in racial groups previously thought to be impervious to the problem. ~ Marya Hornbacher

I have a remarkable ability to delete all better judgement from my brain when I get my head set on something. I have no sense of moderation, no sense of caution. I have no sense pretty much. ~ Marya Hornbacher

Putting it another way: A group of fat teenagers who lost 25 percent of their body weight were in worse health than teenagers with anorexia. It ~ Rebecca Jane Weinstein

While she is still hospitalised, I take Emma out for strengthening walks, for her muscles and been under-used for a long time. She is sometimes breathless, I notice with concern, and there are other changes in her, either through a nerve her therapy touches, or through her illness, or both, which make her, quite often, disagreeable to be with. ~ Carol Lee

You deserve the place you have in this world. Do not let the eating disorder take that from you. ~ Rae Smith

A lot of the girls were awful, very catty. It was a competitive environment that I didn't like. You have no idea of the anorexia I saw around me. ~ Kate Winslet

Anorexia is a response to cultural images of the female body - waiflike, angular - that both capitulates to the ideal and also mocks it, strips away all the ancillary signs of sexuality, strips away breasts and hips and butt and leaves in their place a garish caricature, a cruel cartoon of flesh and bone. ~ Caroline Knapp

She'd lost two more pounds. A picture of the models she'd cut out of the magazine flashed through Kessa's mind. And the winner is ... seventy-three! ~ Steven Levenkron

From the newsstands a dozen models smiled up at her from a dozen magazine covers, smiled in thin-faced, high-cheekboned agreement to Kessa's new discovery. They knew the secret too. They knew thin was good, thin was strong; thin was safe. ~ Steven Levenkron

In the 1980s, research on post traumatic stress disorder in Vietnam veterans was regarded as important, noble, and useful. When the same researchers looked at the same problem in children who had been sexually abused, a tremendous controversy ensued a controversy that persists to this day. There were those who disputed the extent and severity of the sexual abuse that had been uncovered. ~ Patrick J. Carnes

i deem her insecurities
insufferable turn-offs
as if the male standard for sexiness
is a gospel
that demands she stop starving herself
because i like something to grab onto
and how dare she not forfeit
her fetish for a fading frame
to be my performance piece ~ Britt Greifeld

No matter what we weigh, those of us who are compulsive eaters have anorexia of the soul. We refuse to take in what sustains us. We live lives of deprivation. And when we can't stand it any longer, we binge. ~ Geneen Roth

Love - the desire to love and be loved, to hold and be held, to give love even if your experience as a recipient has been compromised or incomplete - is the constant on the continuum of hunger, it's what links the anorexic to the garden-variety dieter, it's the persistent pulse of need and yearning behind the reach for food, for sex, for something. ~ Caroline Knapp

Sick equaled thin and thin got me noticed. Being noticed made me feel loved. ~ Jennifer Pastiloff

I decided to say something.
It was through an email, an email to my mom confessing that I had a problem with food, that maybe it was an eating disorder, that I wasn't sure what to do or feel. That yes, I had gained weight, and I was scared, and I was constantly thinking about food.
That it was taking over my life. ~ Rachael Rose Steil

Doesn' t she care what she does to her family? ' people will ask.
' How can she starve herself like that? '
She has fallen into bad company, been influenced from within by something she thought she could control, but which has ended up controlling her.
Experts who have spent years working with anoresia suffreres see the illness as a means of expressing distress - a symptom, not a cause. One doctor describes anorexia as a solution to an individual's problem, so by treating the solution life is made more difficult.
This would explain why Emma is ruthless in protecting her illness, as if it were her life, rather than the thing which is destroying her. ~ Carol Lee

For years, I had used these fractured men to justify my cynicism and workaholism, and the grief, insomnia and casual anorexia were no longer of any interest to me. ~ Antonella Gambotto-Burke

I again invoke my favorite analogy for eating disorders: abusive lovers. And what do you do when someone is in an abusive relationship? You don't allow visitation rights, weekly dates. You don't put them in the vicinity of or let the abuser flirt with them. You keep them the fuck away. ~ Kelsey Osgood

In New York, if you weigh under 200 pounds and decline so much as a cookie at a co-worker's party, women will flock to your side, assuring you of your appealing physique. This is how skittish we are about the dangers of anorexia and the pressures of body image. ~ Sloane Crosley

The dizzy rapture of starving. The power of needing nothing. By force of will I make myself the impossible sprite who lives on air, on water, on purity. ~ Kathryn Harrison

Recovery doesn't mean putting your life on hold. Recovery means holding on so you can live your best life. ~ Brittany Burgunder

I've come to realize that hunger feels more like home than any tangible structure ever has, or probably ever will. I know now that creating absence is my way of coping with absence. ~ Kris Kidd

She ran her hands over her body as if to bid it good-bye. The hipbones rising from a shrunken stomach were razor-sharp. Would they be lost in a sea of fat? She counted her ribs bone by bone. Where would they go? ~ Steven Levenkron

Most dancers have no awareness of how they look; half of them think they're fat. There is anorexia in the ballet world; there are those things. ~ Benjamin Millepied

In summary, the research literature suggests that two forms of outpatient psychotherapy may be effective for anorexia: family therapy based on the Maudsley approach and EOIT as developed by Robin and colleagues. Up to this point, family treatment has received greater attention and has more evidence to support it. However, the tradition of psychodynamic psychotherapy lends additional credibility to EOIT. ~ James E. Lock

When in a state of hunger, one ought not to undertake labor. ~ Hippocrates

I don't understand anorexia; I'm too greedy to ever not eat ... I just can't do it. ~ Keshia Knight Pulliam

Emma says her illness was a kind of self-hypnosis which obliterated the outside world, a way of escaping life and reducing its proportions to what she could manage. ~ Carol Lee

Looking down, she became aware of the water, which was covered with a film of calcinous hard-water particles of dirt and soap, and of the body that was sitting in it, somehow no longer quite her own. All at once she was afraid that she was dissolving, coming apart layer by layer like a piece of cardboard in a gutter puddle. ~ Margaret Atwood

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. ~ Tracey Gold

I think maybe they come out into the grounds in nightwear. But no, in typical anorexic stype they have read the fashion magazines literally. This is their version of thin girls in strappy clothes.
The girl in the petticoat talks to me, as Emma has done on occsasion, in a rather grand style, as if she is a 'lady' of some substance and I a visiting guest.
Do they chat much about clothes? I ask Emma in the car.
She shakes her head.
So, does she, Emma, see the difference between underwear or nightwear and 'going out' clothes?
'Yes,' she says, her voices strained again. 'But it's one of the things you don't know properly when you're ill and confused. You see these pictures and the people in the magazines are real for you. ~ Carol Lee

Locking away appetite, anger, the fullness of life, anorexia helps cover up whatever struggles inside. With its controlling bouts of bingeing and starvation, of trance and half-life, it becomes a shield to fend off despair and longing and what most of use would see as ordinary responsible behavior. ~ Carol Lee

It's so easy to focus on the anguish and the misery; it's harder, somehow, to acknowledge the positive, maybe for fear of jinxing it, bringing the nightmare back down on our heads. ~ Harriet Brown

Every lineament of the girl's wasted body is a testament to her inner turmoil. Willow can only imagine what kind of pain she must be in to destroy herself that way. She knows there's something ironic in her compassion for the other girl, but she can't help feeling that this utter mortification of the flesh is far worse than anything that she herself has done. ~ Julia Hoban

Artistic anorexia & sexual avoidance have the same root fears – fear of intimacy, fear of exposure, fear of failure". ~ Julia Cameron

The fear of an unknown never resolves, because the unknown expands infinitely outward, leaving you to cling pitifully to any small shelter of the known: a cracker has twelve calories; the skin, when cut, bleeds. ~ Caroline Kettlewell

She was afraid of losing her shape, spreading out, not being able to contain herself any longer, beginning (that would be worst of all) to talk a lot, to tell everybody, to cry. ~ Margaret Atwood

I've got a lot of experience with anorexia - my grandmother and great-grandmother suffered from it, and I had a lot of friends at school who suffered from it. I know it's not something to be taken lightly and I don't. ~ Keira Knightley

I was a very lonely child and it's funy but the first word that comes to my head is "starved". I felt starved of affection, starved of love and I felt that it wasn't OK to ask for it. Maybe there was a sense that if I deserved it, it would be there. There must be something I'd done which meant I didn't deserve it. ~ Carol Lee

I must fight my demons, they are illogical and irrational, yet they seem to beat me each time they strike. ~ Sophie Glynn

Usually when we think about violence, we think about interpersonal forms of violence, such as attempted murder or homicide, assault and battery, rape and sexual assault, robbery, kidnapping, and torture. Rarely do we think of suicide, anorexia, and self-flaggelation, or of verbal abuse, threats, and intimidation as forms of interpersonal violence. ~ Gregg Barak

Falling, falling, falling, falling down. Look yourself in the eye before you drown. ~ Emily Saliers

her eyes are unfathomable to me, hostile, even, as if she had removed herself to a place where I cannot reach her - somewhere I cannot know. ~ Carol Lee

Do I worry about overly retouched photos giving women unrealistic expectations and body image issues? I do. I think that we will soon see a rise in anorexia in women over seventy. Because only people over seventy are fooled by Photoshop. Only your great-aunt forwards you an image of Sarah Palin holding a rifle and wearing an American-flag bikini and thinks it's real. Only your uncle Vic sends a photo of Barack Obama wearing a hammer and sickle T-shirt and has to have it explained to him that somebody faked that with the computer. ~ Tina Fey

Kessa began to cut her meat into tiny pieces. As a whole it was unmanageable, frightening; but divided and arranged, the meat could be controlled. She cut four pieces. She'd count to four between each bite. ~ Steven Levenkron

I've been blamed for everything, from smoking to heroin to anorexia. ~ Kate Moss

Father absence has been implicated in anorexia nervosa, in which daughters may exhibit literal father hunger by starving themselves. ~ Victoria Secunda

I've never had anorexia, but I know it well. I see it on the street, in the gaunt and sunken face, the boney chest, the spindly arms of an emaciated woman. I've come to recognize the flat look of despair, the hopelessness that follows, inevitably, from years of starvation. I think: That could have been [me]. It wasn't. It's not. ~ Harriet Brown

In that six months, so much happened that death seemed, primarily, inconvenient. The trial period was extended. I seem to keep extending it. There are many things to do. There are books to write and naps to take. There are movies to see and scrambled eggs to eat. Life is essentially trivial. You either decide you will take the trite business of life and give yourself the option of doing something really cool, or you decide you will opt for the Grand Epic of eating disorders and dedicate your life to being seriously trivial. ~ Marya Hornbacher

Kessa ran her fingers over her stomach. Flat. But was it flat enough? Not quite. She still had some way to go. Just to be safe, she told herself. Still, it was nice the way her pelvic bones rose like sharp hills on either side of her stomach. I love bones. Bones are beautiful. ~ Steven Levenkron

I was anorexic in the '60s and '70s, although it wasn't called anorexia then. I thought people would be nicer to me if I looked very small and delicate, so food wasn't high on my agenda. But it is now. ~ Marianne Faithfull

I wonder if she felt like me … like there's someone inside that is so terrified, so alone … so confused and fucked up … death … it's welcoming … it's familiar. Living … that's the hard part. Sometimes just taking a breath hurts. ~ Natasha Jennings

We can always find each other, we girls with secrets. ~ Crystal Renn

For the longest time, Indian women have been okay with being curvy. But I think the modern Indian woman needs to get toned. I don't endorse being thin. Anorexia and bulimia are a reality in India because everybody wants to be thin. ~ Bipasha Basu

Between 10 and 20 percent of people with anorexia die from heart attacks, other complications and suicide; the disease has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. Or Kitty could have lost her life in a different way, lost it to the roller coaster of relapse and recovery, inpatient and outpatient, that eats up, on average, five to seven years. Or a lifetime: only half of all anorexics recovery in the end. The other half endure lives of dysfunction and despair. Friends and families give up on them. Doctors dread treating them. They're left to stand in the bakery with the voice ringing in their ears, alone in every way that matters. ~ Harriet Brown

And when you crush an apple with your teeth, say to it in your heart:
Your seeds shall live in my body,
And the buds of your tomorrow shall blossom in my heart,
And your fragrance shall be my breath,
And together we shall rejoice through all the seasons. ~ Kahlil Gibran

Compulsive eating is basically a refusal to be fully alive. No matter what we weigh, those of us who are compulsive eaters have anorexia of the soul. We refuse to take in what sustains us. We live lives of deprivation. And when we can't stand it any longer, we binge. The way we are able to accomplish all of this is by the simple act of bolting
of leaving ourselves
hundreds of times a day. ~ Geneen Roth

Depression is about anger, it is about anxiety, it is about character and heredity. But it is also about something that is in its way quite unique. It is the illness of identity, it is the illness of those who do not know where they fit, who lose faith in the myths they have so painstakenly created for themselves. [ ... ] It is a plague - especially if you add in its various forms of expression, like alcoholism, anorexia, bulimia, drug addiction, compulsive behaviour of one kind or another. They're all the same things: attempts to avoid disappearance, or nothingness, or chaos. ~ Tim Lott

Love yourself instead of abusing yourself. ~ Karolina Kurkova

She began to be reassured by these pains, tangible symbols of her success in becoming thinner than anyone else. Her only identity was being "the skinniest." She had to feel it. ~ Steven Levenkron

I want to go to sleep and not wake up, but I don't want to die. I want to eat like a normal person eats, but I need to see my bones or I will hate myself even more and I might cut my heart out or take every pill that was ever made. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

I wanted to kill the me underneath. That fact haunted my days and nights. When you realize you hate yourself so much, when you realize that you cannot stand who you are, and this deep spite has been the motivation behind your behavior for many years, your brain can't quite deal with it. It will try very hard to avoid that realization; it will try, in a last-ditch effort to keep your remaining parts alive, to remake the rest of you. This is, I believe, different from the suicidal wish of those who are in so much pain that death feels like relief, different from the suicide I would later attempt, trying to escape that pain. This is a wish to murder yourself; the connotation of kill is too mild. This is a belief that you deserve slow torture, violent death. ~ Marya Hornbacher

Eating disorders are like a gun that's formed by genetics, loaded by a culture and family ideals, and triggered by unbearable distress. ~ Aimee Liu

I was struggling with anorexia, and one of the biggest problems with an eating disorder is you don't realize you have it. And you can't heal until you realize there's a problem. ~ Lindsey Stirling

They taught me not to harm myself by taking away anything that could be used to cause harm, by analysing my every move and studying every centimetre of my naked body on Thursday afternoons. They taught me to eat and love myself by imposing fear of consequence. When the fear vanished, I knew I would forget. They taught me nothing. ~ Sophie Glynn

Girls developed eating disorders when our culture developed a standard of beauty that they couldn't obtain by being healthy. When unnatural thinness became attractive, girls did unnatural things to be thin. ~ Mary Pipher

But I know that if I don't at least try, I'll stay the way I am till it kills me. Till I kill me, I mean. I never really accept that that's what I'm doing - I say it, but I don't believe it. ~ Deborah Hautzig

Anorexia taught me to love life and to realise that starving yourself to death is a bloody waste of time. It's awful, and it hurts so many people around you. It's a terribly selfish thing to do. ~ Celia Imrie

I did extensive research on media and anorexia and found out that the fashion magazines are to blame in a way. They project an image of a woman that is completely absurd, but girls and women believe they should be very skinny. They don't look like real woman anymore. ~ Oliviero Toscani

In Hollywood, I'm obese. I'm considered a fat actress. I eat like a caveman. I'll be the only actress who doesn't have anorexia rumours! I'm never going to starve myself for a part. I'm invincible. I don't want little girls to be like, "Oh, I want to look like Katniss, so I'm going to skip dinner." ~ Jennifer Lawrence

Around eighth grade Margot started getting really sensitive about her weight, even though she wasn't remotely fat - just a little round-faced. So Margot did what any normal fourteen-year-old girl would do. She started puking on purpose, every day after fifth period. Of course now, she does more than puke. But we don't talk about that. Because real friends don't judge each other for what they do to survive in hell. ~ Isobel Irons

Besides, I'd heard too many Karen Carpenter tales at Gladstone PTA meetings, and they often took the form of boasts. The prestigious diagnosis of anorexia seemed much coveted not only by the students but by their mothers, who would compete over whose daughter ate less. No wonder the poor girls were a mess. ~ Lionel Shriver

If anorexia was really incurable, I'd still weigh ninety-two pounds--isolated in a world controlled by food and distorted versions of myself. I'm not that person anymore. I don't live in that world anymore. I hate the thought that someone, somewhere might read about their "incurable eating disorder" and believe it to be the truth. That's why I'm telling you, it's not.So hang in there, it's worth it. You're worth it. ~ Lindsey Stirling

No two eating disorders are the same.
No two individuals are the same.
No two paths to recovery are the same.
But everyone's strength to reach recovery IS the same. ~ Brittany Burgunder

I look back on my life the way one watches a badly scripted action flick, sitting at the edge of the seat, bursting out, "No, no, don't open that door! The bad guy is in there and he'll grab you and put his hand over your mouth and tie you up and then you'll miss the train and everything will fall apart!" Except there is no bad guy in this tale. The person who jumped through the door and grabbed me and tied me up was, unfortunately, me. My double image, the evil skinny chick who hisses, Don't eat. I'm not going to let you eat. I'll let you go as soon as you're thin, I swear I will. Everything will be okay when you're thin. ~ Marya Hornbacher

I promise no food will ever hurt you as much as a negative mind. ~ Brittany Burgunder

I had always liked my anorexic reflection. It meant seeing the parts instead of the whole. Each connection, each articulation of muscle, skin, and bone made explicit. Gert said that we all had distorted images of ourselves. Either fatter or skinnier than we really were. She said we hated our bodies, hated ourselves. I had never thought so. ~ Stephanie Grant

People with mental illnesses aren't wrapped up in themselves because they are intrinsically any more selfish than other people. Of course not. They are just feeling things that can't be ignored. Things that point the arrows inward. ~ Matt Haig

He leaned down and whispered to me: No matter how thin you get, no matter how short you cut your hair, it's still going to be you underneath. And he let go of my arm and walked back down the hall. ~ Marya Hornbacher

She used to look forward to changing in the locker room when other girls stole shocked glances at her emaciated body last spring. Now they would look at her and think she was fat
just as fat as all the other girls, maybe even fatter. Nothing separated her from the parade of thunder thighs trooping up the stairs from the locker room to the gym. ~ Steven Levenkron

I almost lost my best friend to anorexia. I am lending my voice as an entertainer, a mom, and a friend because I want to bring great awareness to this cause. ~ Sara Evans

Every woman knows that, regardless of all her other achievements, she is a failure if she is not beautiful. ~ Germaine Greer

We are all primary numbers divisible only by ourselves. ~ Jean Guitton

I had been on this insane diet for almost 17 years to maintain the weight that was demanded of me when I was modeling. My diet was really starvation. I am not naturally that thin. ~ Carre Otis

Even with friends, I had difficulty giving or receiving physical affection, although I secretly craved it. ~ Kate M. Taylor

Somewhere I read that anorexia recovery is more painful for the sufferer than actively engaging in the eating disordered behaviours ~ Nancy Tucker

Deception' is the word I most associate with anorexia and the treachery which comes from falsehood. The illness appears inviting. It would seem to offer something to those unwary or unlucky enough to suffer from it - friendship, a get-out, or a haven - when, in fact, it is a trap. ~ Carol Lee

And dieting, I discovered, was another form of disordered eating, just as anorexia and bulimia similarly disrupt the natural order of eating. "Ordered" eating is the practice of eating when you are hungry and ceasing to eat when your brain sends the signal that your stomach is full ... All people who live their lives on a diet are suffering. If you can accept your natural body weight and not force it to beneath your body's natural, healthy weight, then you can live your life free of dieting, of restriction, of feeling guilty every time you eat a slice of your kid's birthday cake. ~ Portia De Rossi

Then I took a shower, unlocked the door, and set out on destroying myself. ~ Emma Woolf

Well, Kessa, I am glad to see that you're taking your body seriously. I shudder when I see the girls leaving class and heading for the nearest hamburger, coke, and French fry station.The thought of them pouring all those dead calories into themselves makes me want to cry. You'd think after a rigorous dance class they'd have more respect for their bodies. ~ Steven Levenkron