Richard Simmons Quotes

I was 85 lbs. at my 2000 homecoming dance. But I wanted my collarbones and hip bones to show more. I'd feel my hip bones to make sure they were out. If not, I had more weight to lose. I lost my period until I was 17. I loved that. It meant I wasn't healthy, and I didn't want to be healthy.

I've never personally been anorexic.

It was between the ages of 14 and 20 and I started off not eating at all, maybe an apple a day.

I had been anorexic for about five years. And I was really sick. I probably weighed about 70 pounds.

When you go further and further into starvation you chose yourself, your mind becomes totally obsessed with not eating. It's like a religion where everything is sinful, and there is a heaven at the end where you are thin and don't need energy anymore.

I used to starve myself to death.

Of all the mental illnesses, anorexia has the highest morbidity rate. It's serious.

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.

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

Weight was the thing I hyperfocused on. It went from me losing a few pounds to slowly over time losing more and more weight and becoming more and more focused on it.

My body started to shut down. I got really, really ill. When you're starving yourself, you can't concentrate. I was like a walking zombie, like the walking dead. I was just consumed with what I would eat, what I wouldn't eat.

I knew that my hair was falling out and I had really weird skin. My face looked really weird and I was getting this fuzz on my face and I was always cold - always to the point of uncontrollably shaking. I was more scared that 85 lbs. wasn't good enough. I wanted to be lower.

For several years I had no idea that I had become anorexic. And I'd be at places with people I cared about, but what I was thinking about was how much extra grease was on the pizza or the calories that I knew was in that shake.

I took desperate measures to lose weight and did terrible things to myself. I went from diet pills to thirty laxatives a day to throwing up.

I wasn't strong enough to have an eating disorder. I tried to go anorexic for a good three hours. I ate ice and celery, but that's not even anorexic. And I quit. I was like, 'Ma, can you make me a sandwich? Like, immediately.'

As a teen, I was both anorexic and bulimic.

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.

I have permanent damage to my body because I wanted to be thin.

A misperception about anorexia is that you don't eat. Not true. Maybe you eat just 500 calories a day. It would be easy for me to say, 'Why didn't my parents notice?' But I didn't want them to. I made sure to eat half a sandwich around my parents.

I don't think just being skinny means necessarily anorexic.

I never starved myself.

Where do you go to get anorexia?

I had a very unhealthy relationship with food that turned into bulimia.

While I was never diagnosed with anorexia or bulimia at the time, I've learned that starving myself and bingeing means I had both.

I didn't choose to get anorexia. I may have made some childhood-like choices to try to control something. 'I know what I'll do: I'll just not eat.' That was the initial point, but then it spiraled and became a disease - not a choice by any means.