If only it was possible to stop those kids from killing themselves! You do know, don't you, of cases when these anorectic girls have starved themselves to death? Th scariest thing about anorexia is it ruins your whole body so that even a simple cold can kill you easily.

If you knew anything, you'd know that none of us do it to be thin.
We just feel like our lives are out of control.
We search frantically online for ways to hide it from our family members because we feel like freaks and we feel like you judge us too harshly.
We're afraid you'll be angry or disappointed.
You- our parents- judge us, and we can't stand it.

Eating disorders find us because we feel out of control, and we keep the disorder safe and sheltered within us because we're afraid you might blame us. Like this was the life we had imagined for ourselves.

Rather than admitting we have a problem, most of us pretend we like it.
Very few of us do.

Everyone has people they look up to, according to what they'd like to achieve.
Male body builders emulate Governor Arnold.
We emulate fashion models, and sometimes skeletons.

Pro Ana sites do not teach you how to have an eating disorder. We hate healthy people who want to be like us. We look down on the little 14-year-olds who ask us "how to be ana," and we pity them because they have no idea what they're getting into.
Pro Ana sites just let us find people who have similar goals and need support.

This very weight loss forum is a lot like our pro-ana forums.

Do not blame the media for us.
It's just plain stupid.

The media is beginning to favor bigger women and we find this disgusting.

I dunno what I'm getting at.
I wish I could help people understand...

I'm writing a book about life in the mid of an Anorexic person...
My name is Reshanna Jolie Sexton.
Look for my book someday.
Maybe then you'll get it.

It'll be very detailed, but it's not meant to be a daily "Ana Guide."
It's so that parents know what to look for.
The early signs, as well as the signs of a girl crying for help, close to death.

<33
P.S. two tidbits for you:
-Anorexia dates as far back as the days of the black death.

-Those most prone to developing an eating disorder are females in late adolescence and early adulthood (17-24 years old).

Pro ana websites have been around for 10 years at least, that's when I was first looking to start loosing weight, and in my naivety I thought that reading about people who were anorexic/bulimic would help ME to stop eating and => lose weight. Stupid I know... now.

What I wanted to say thought is that there is, more often than not, an underlying cause for developing an eating disorder. You will find that the majority of sufferers have something in their lives that they are not happy about (not necessarily their weight) and having complete control over what goes into their body (food choice) is the only thing that they have control over and it becomes an obsession.

This is why curing it is so difficult because simply forcing them to eat, or using logic "you will die if you don't eat" method doesn't work.

So none of you really want to be thin, yet you all have a goal to be thin? I think you have contradicted yourself. If you're pro ana/mia you need medical treatment, it is really that simple and that complex all at the same time. Of course people with mental conditions often are unware of their need for this medical treatment and there in lies the problem.

I frequent pro-ana/mia sites, but just as a reminder to myself how not to lose weight.

At first I found them morbidly fascinating, but as I read the stories of more and more girls, I realized that for all their talk of "lovelies", "my starving pretties", blah blah blah glib bull****, most of them are terrified, isolated, miserable, and sick. Their loathing of fat people is typically a projection of their own self loathing. They can never be good enough.

Their self esteem is shattered by the smallest things, like "bingeing" on three potato chips, or having their boyfriends glance in someone else's general direction. They are nothing to glamorize or emulate. A lot of them come from broken homes or exist in mentally abusive relationships. They torture themselves, physically and psychologically.

It's pathetic and sad.

I do like the idea of "thinspiration" though, and I do like to look at their photos of thin women as inspiration. But some of the "thinspiration" models they post on those sites are straight-up emaciated, and it's pretty disgusting.

Congrats to those out there who kicked the ED addiction.

I once fell under a mild ED spell until I did the following exercise:

Walk down the street and notice how many thin and skinny people there are. Are they all model beautiful and hot? HEll NO!


There are a lot of not so attractive but thin and skinny people in the world. In my mind being thin is going to make you as attractive as being rich. Sure it might help but being beautiful is soooooo much more than just how much fat is on your body.

I did exactly the same. For me it would just be going from one death sentence to another.

Being thin doesn't mean being beautiful. Media influences teens nowadays that they have to be thin in order to be attractive which is not good. These teens just need acceptance and appreciation from the community especially from the opposite sex. I guess, putting off this standard can help the teen to love their body no matter how thin or fat they are.

I keep reading ''the pressure from the media'' everywhere. ''society make us'' but society doesn't make us sick. we hurt our bodies.. and I include myself as a recovering bulimic.

why do we care so much about it? why the obsession with being crazy thin?

if you notice closely ''society'' pretty much bashes on anyone, especially the celebrity media. if they are too skinny, they are anorexic and sick. if they are slightly above average or curvy, they are fat an disgusting. an inch of cellulite in a 50 year old woman? inconceivable.
then they turn to expensive, painful and dangerous operations but then the media bashes on the surgery as well! so basically there is no way of winning over these floating heads of society that we tend to care so much about.

I've seen the mia and ana pages and the damage they cause to themselves it is so deep.. they punish themselves every day for not fitting a mold almost no one can fit.
it saddens me because we should do more about it but I don't see it happening as long as things remain like this..

we have to love our selfs no matter what first. that is the hardest part when we are so fixated on trying to please others by delivering what we believe they want.. having to be healthy over wanting to be skinny is a tough fight but we can make it.

sorry got to excited!

Hey New here, first post thought I would add my 2 cents...

I hate how society puts so much pressure on us to have the perfect body, especialy when it comes to teenagers. Me being 19 I understand the pressure it entails to keep your body in shape, I don't but 10-15lbs which I will be loosing will help . But to go as far as becoming ana or mia, well it isn't worth it. I know some who is ana and they hate it but they can't change it, I think sites that are pro-ana are just plain stupid. Its simple, if you want to loose weight, exercise, if you want to gain weight, build your muscle up.

My best friend in high school lost a lot of weight from bilemia, I tried to get her to quit and she refused, so we quit being friends.

Then a girl I worked with a few years ago lost a lot of weight by developing anorexia after starting smoking.

And now my manager lost a lot of weight from anorexia. He gets seizures, looks like a skeleton, and announces to everyone that his BMI is below minimum.

I do not want to loose it that way.

The first two actually seemed to believe there was no other way to loose weight, I think it would be a good idea to teach students the real way to loose weight, and how not to.

I agree with that.

It is disgusting. I think to a true anorexic, they do not have any meaning. I used to refuse the fact I had a problem and those sites make it more than obvious it's for people with eating disorders, which a person with an eating disorder will not want to see, because they don't think they have one...if that makes any sense. Teaching people how to be anorexic is just rediculous. It's a mental disorder, not something you can teach. They're just for people who want to crash-diet, and if they look for them in the first place they're silly. But they thinspiration galleries are pretty much mainsteam media anyway. We need to address mainsteam media...that's where the problems lying.

I've been on the "other side" of the eating disorder world myself.

I once kicked the lifestyle for a number of years but recently I've started to creep back up a bit on me.

I know exactly what people mean by when other's say they are fine and have a great body but you don't care.

it is kind of funny eh? a whole host of friends and family can tell you that you're body is fine but look at one magazine cover and that's all it takes to feel fat.

It's part of the reason why I took on the whole Fit Rebel persona. Having a bit of "screw you" attitude towards things like unrealistic images really helped. It also helped to educate myself on just how doctored those media images really are. Holly cow! Those images on the magazines are just about as natural as a Twinkie and Coke Zero lunch!