Shantel VanSanten Quotes

I was low-key abusing myself. The idea of being skinny became something that was most appealing to me. Even if you watch 'The Real,' from season 1 to season 4, I was always 100 lbs. I started to really work hard to stay petite and to not gain weight and to stay sample size.

I must be an anorexic because an anorexic looks in the mirror and sees a fat person.

I dare anybody to look at me and say I'm anorexic. I'm so totally not.

I am not naturally that thin, so I had to go through everything from using drugs to diet pills to laxatives to fasting. Those were my main ways of controlling my weight.

I was never anorexic, so I was never that skinny. I was never bony-bony. But I remember thinking, I don't want to be this skinny.

Eating disorders, body dysmorphia and a general dissatisfaction with one's life and body seems to ail too many young people.

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

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 was bulimic and anorexic for a while, just hating my body. As an actress, I was never thin enough, never pretty enough. My boobs weren't big enough.

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.'

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.

As a teen, I was both anorexic and bulimic.

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.

I see girls who are so skinny on the catwalks, and I know so many of them destroy their lives and their family's lives.

So I would always try and be the lightest I could. In high school, I really wouldn't eat. I would only have lunch and I would only have salads. And then it got so crazy as to just eating like a cracker or a cucumber a day and I would feel full.

I tried being anorexic for four hours, and then I was like, I need some bagels.

I was never diagnosed with an eating disorder but I definitely had a difficult relationship with food.

I used to starve myself to death.

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

For many years, I struggled with how I felt about myself. I hid and harbored very self-destructive eating issues, namely anorexia, which at its worst caused me to lose half of my hair and brought my weight down dramatically.

I couldn't believe they were saying I put a horrible fake plastic bosom over scars I was trying to heal and keep it in place with a tight bra, which could stop my blood flow, just so I could fit into my clothes.

I didn't think I was fat. I just thought I didn't need to gain any weight. But I would drop weight and then I would be comfortable with that number. Then I would lose more weight and that would become my new number.

I'd lie in bed in my dormitory and grab at bits of my body, wanting to tear them off... I was so large by then that, in the heat, my thighs chafed together and bled. I was very unhappy, and yet no one ever asked me how I felt.

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.

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.