One woman’s obsession with stars and their eating habits saw her weight plummet to just five-and-a-half stone. Emma Pinch reports
CATCHING sight of the familiar face smiling out of the glossy cover, Rachel’s heart beat a little faster.
She snatched the magazine from the shelf, and flicked quickly through it to the story she sought. There it was, a paparazzi shot of a bikini-clad Jennifer Lopez, tanned skin emphasising her taut curves. “J-Lo loses 10lb on juice diet!” yelled the strapline across the top.
Self-loathing prickled under Rachel’s skin. Greedy, fat, stupid, girl. Why hadn’t she been more disciplined?
To the outsider, weight was the last thing the frail woman with the magazine in her hand needed to lose.
Trying to emulate the airbrushed stars of the celeb mags and their extreme diets had seen Rachel Pennington’s weight plummet to five and a half stone. At five-foot six, her life was hanging in the balance.
Now receiving expert psychiatric help and determined more than ever to get well, Rachel wants to warn others against striving for impossible levels of perfection.
Rachel, 33, from Garston, Liverpool, had battled anorexia off and on since her teens, but hoped she had beaten it when she emerged from hospital in April this year.
“I convinced myself that my way forward was to be healthy and to knock out anything that was unhealthy, and I was very much influenced by celebrity diets,” she says. “It was my downfall. I should have kept away from reading about them – they were my version of porn.
“I used to find myself, on Tuesdays when the new weeklies came out, at the newsagents. I would not go and buy them, but I would obsessively stand at the newspaper rack and read about what diets they were on.
“J-Lo would have been on a juice diet for the last two weeks and it would make me feel guilty that I hadn’t followed it. I would feel terrible that I had eaten an apple and had more than just juice.”
Her diet started off with a variety of foodstuffs, including protein, carbs, fruit and vegetables.
“I just began to eat nothing but healthy food – salads, fruit, fish and things that were low in fat,” she said.
“At first for lunch I ate tuna – having first washed out the oil – salad and wholemeal bread and low-fat hummus.”
But she started to tweak her diet when she learned of reported celebrity diet tricks.
“I read that Liz Hurley allegedly ate once a day and that made an impression on me,” she recalls.
“With Victoria Beckham, I was aware she was too thin and it was a mixture of reactions. My fighting, healthy self wanted to be like Kate Winslet, slim, curvy and confident.
“But the person who isn’t fighting the anorexia was asking if I looked any thinner, and wanted to be even thinner than Victoria Beckham.
“Over the course of three months, my food became just salad.
“I would not even eat vegetables towards the end. The only fruit I would allow was an apple – not strawberries because I became convinced they were high in sugar.
“Anything I would slightly enjoy eating, I would see as the wrong sort of food.”
Rachel’s battle with anorexia began when she was just 12 and decided she wanted her body to be more like the slim, athletic frames of the gymnasts which were all over the TV at the time.
Her mum found her being sick and managed to nurse her back to health, but eating disorders continued to plague her in times of grief and stress.
Now she is being treated as a day patient by psychiatrists and nutritionists at the Priory Highbank, in Bury, and hopes she has turned a corner. But when the headlines splashed across the celeb magazine covers this week include: “New mums’ drastic weightloss”, “Best and worst beach babes” and “Cheryl’s new size six diet”, it is a constant battle.
RACHEL says the media has a duty to be more responsible.
“You are bombarded with it,” she said. “When you read about Victoria Beckham, it’s all about her diet, fish and salad and so on, and it really has an effect. Even in a general interview with a celebrity, it has to include what they eat.
“When I got out of hospital last time, certain clothes companies had introduced size four into their shops. The impact made by the fashion industry and magazines is huge.
“My husband pointed it out, that there was an article in one of the magazines I had bought, about a girl who weighed three-and-a-half stone and two pages on was one suggesting you ‘swap this food for this other food’ to reduce calorie intake.
“It doesn’t make sense – what message is it sending out to young women?”
The form of anorexia which stems from an obsession with a confused version of “healthy eating” has been termed “orthorexia”.
Dr Kay Callender, consultant psychiatrist in eating disorders and medical director at Highbank Hospital, has treated eating disorders for 15 years.
“Sufferers are people aware of their weight and shape but also people who are aware of health and concerned about their diet,” she says.
“They pick up on the healthy eating message, but they don’t put it all together to have a healthy balanced diet. It’s all or nothing – they leave out everything with fat in it, and leave out food groups, usually meat or dairy, often after quick high street food intolerance tests.
“Most people don’t find an alternative for meat and dairy, because it’s often linked to weight as well, so they abstain and crash diet.
“We all do it to a certain degree but the difference is they could never go and have a meal out and forget the rules.
“If they break the rules, the feeling of guilt and remorse is overwhelming and they hate themselves, and then self hurt can develop.”
Part of the problem, she says, is having too much choice.
“As a nation, we are totally and utterly obsessed with food,” she says.
“It is a social thing. There is so much food around, that twinned with a higher disposable income, people don’t know how to select it, therefore they have to latch on to a new rule about how to eat, which they often find in the media. For example, there was the ‘Stone Age’ diet. This is all about berries and things, no dairy, and we’re told Stone Age people didn’t have cancer. Well, they didn’t live past 30. People are now living until 100.
“I saw another man who was eating 7lbs of vegetables a day, with just brown rice. People want to eat themselves slim, when the answer is eat less, but everything in moderation, and exercise more.”
Rachel has now managed to put on half a stone and she is managing to transform her attitude towards food.
“I’m six stone – it’s very early stages, but something has changed inside me now.
“I accept that food is not the enemy, anorexia is the enemy. There is still a long way to go, but I don’t feel guilty about getting well.
“I’m going to struggle with certain foods, but I know a sensible diet should include certain fats and proteins, and it’s okay to eat a little of what you fancy.
“My message is, keep away from negative images, and don’t strive for perfection, because perfection doesn’t exist – it’s what’s inside that counts.”
And Rachel has the best reason in the world for wanting to get well. “I really want to recover,” she says. “My little girl, Becky, is three next month, and I know I’m going to be alive for her and beat this. I’m more determined than I’ve ever been in my life.”
* FOR advice and information on eating disorders go to www.b-eat.co.uk
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