Jeannie Mai Quotes

I was 17 when my body started changing, and I worried about what I did wrong. I went through a period where I didn't eat at all. I also had someone who was encouraging me to take diet pills. I pushed myself to the extreme because I woke up one day and had hips - and a butt - and thought, 'Oh my gosh, I'm getting fat!'

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 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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

As a teen, I was both anorexic and bulimic.

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

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.

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

With modelling, there's nothing to work on other than losing weight. I definitely had an eating disorder.

I was 103 pounds for 12 years, and what's crazy is that I actually wanted to weigh 100. Honestly, it was for no other reason than the fact that I thought it would be cool to say that I weighed 100 pounds.

The way that these girls keep themselves skinny is awful, isn't it? By vomiting or using hard drugs - which I can't afford.

I have a friend who actually told me that she'd rather be dead than be fat. This is a woman who, if I order a sandwich at lunch, she'll order a salad. If I order a salad, she'll order half a cantaloupe. If I order half a cantaloupe, she'll order a cup of coffee. This bizarre contest continues until she's down to sucking on a mint-flavored toothpick. At this rate, her preference for dying over being fat could be a reality sooner than she thinks.

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.

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

I have something called exercise bulimia, which is where you rid of your calories by over-exercising.

Girls' inner critics are starting to reveal themselves at a younger and younger age. And body image issues are an aspect of their lives which is causing them low self esteem and day-to-day suffering.