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 Calista Flockhart
The ultra-thin actresss spoke out about her much speculated weight problem. She said she doesn’t pay attention to all the gossip that she’s anorexic. She denied rumors that she has an eating disorder. However. later she admitted to having an eating disorder. After years of claiming her skinny figure was due to being "small-boned," the actress has finally revealed grueling work schedules and the stress of finishing the show, which was axed in 2002, made her stop wanting to eat. Flockhart says, "At the time of all that, I was seriously stressed. I was working 15-hour days on the set and then I was dealing with the end of the show, which was basically my life. "I started under-eating, over-exercising, pushing myself too hard and brutalizing my immune system. I guess I just didn't find time to eat.
"I am much more healthy these days."
As a top fashion model, Carre Otis made her living on looking thin and beautiful. But now she is sharing the ugly truth about the weight-loss strategies she subjected herself to and the dire health consequences that resulted.
“I had been on this insane diet for almost 17 years to maintain the weight that was demanded of me when I was modeling,” Otis says. “My diet was really starvation. 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.”
 Catherine Bell
'JAG' actress Catherine Bell struggled with an eating disorder in the past. "About 10 years ago, at the end of a four-month modeling tour in Japan, I became really depressed," she says. "I started eating way too much and got into that whole ugly eating disorder thing." She gained about 20 pounds, but Bell says the support of family and friends, "plus a return to nutritional eating habits and regular exercise," enabled her to lose the excess weight. The results of her struggle stand as testimony for what good food and the right exercise can do. "I'm about 128 pounds," says Bell. "And that's OK with me."
While winning this physical and dramatic role has definitely been a boost to her acting career, Bell is not a novice to the cameras. She began modeling at the age of 16, but does not have happy memories of her time on the runway. "About 10 years ago, at the end of a four-month modeling tour in Japan, I became really depressed," she says. "I started eating way too much and got into that whole ugly eating disorder thing." She gained about 20 pounds, but Bell says the support of family and friends, "plus a return to nutritional eating habits and regular exercise," enabled her to lose the excess weight. The results of her struggle stand as testimony for what good food and the right exercise can do. "I'm about 128 pounds," says Bell. "And that's OK with me."
Nutritional staples in Bell's food regimen now include vegetable juice and egg white omelets for breakfast, and chicken, fish or lean beef for lunch and dinner. "I will reach for the occasional bag of Doritos, chocolate or cookies, but most of the time it's carrots or an apple instead," says Bell. "Diets don't work for me--moderation is the key." When asked about guilty pleasures, the actress responds, "Mashed potatoes and gravy. I could eat a whole plate of that."
 Catherine Oxenberg
Actress Catherine Oxenberg (daughter of Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia and a distant relative of Britain's royal family; she played Princess Di in 'The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana' in 1982, and also 1992 in 'Charles and Diana: Unhappily Ever After'), who was also sexually abused within the family as a child, struggled with an eating disorder for 20 years and finally found the strength to beat bulimia and successfully won this battle. "I really thought I would never get through it. I'd put myself in rehab and I would be fine for nine months and then I'd blow it again." Catherine also said that her bulimia had massive physical repercussions on her body. "I destroyed my teeth because you're vomiting hydrochloric acid so that acid eats away at the enamel in your teeth, so I've had horrendous problems with my teeth."
 Catherine Hickland
Catherine Hickland observes: “For actresses our looks are like our instruments; we are hyperaware of appearance, weight, and beauty. And so we learn of obsessive dieting, and obsessive exercise, and of the delusion that one is always 'fat' even though one’s bones stick out, and of the rediscovery of the ancient Roman trick of vomiting, and of the ruinous consequences of that method for the teeth, and much else that is hidden from the eyes of those who are uninitiated into eating disorders."
 Cathy Rigby
In the 1968 Summer Olympics at Mexico City, a blond, pigtailed 15-year-old girl earned the highest U.S. scores in gymnastics. She captured the hearts of millions of people around the world and changed the course of women's gymnastics in the United States. That teenage athlete was Cathy Rigby, the first American woman to win a medal in World Gymnastics competition. She holds 12 international medals, eight of which are gold. While Cathy excelled in the Olympics, she also suffered from an eating disorder.
"We didn't know very much about nutrition. Neither did the coaches," Cathy said, recalling how her eating disorder started. The coaches would tell the athletes what their weight should be, somewhat arbitrarily. Cathy weighed about 94 pounds at the time and was eating one meal a day to maintain her weight at the prescribed 90 pounds. One night, near the end of training camp, the team went out for pizza to celebrate. "I had three pieces and panicked, knowing I would be weighed-in the next day." Cathy knew one girl on the team was taking laxatives but had no idea it was her way of maintaining her weight. Another girl said she threw up everything she ate. That night Cathy tried the latter method, but it didn't work. "When I hit puberty and went up to about 104 pounds two or three months later, I worked a little harder at either starving myself or becoming bulimic."
Cathy's recovery began in the early '80s after she went through a divorce. "I tried to get professional help before that. Even the psychologists and psychiatrists back then, I think, had to look it up." Her early experiences with treatment met with little success. It wasn't until she remarried that a break came. Her desire not to repeat her past failed marriage, along with the persistent encouragement of the man who is now her husband, Tom McCoy, eventually led to a treatment situation that worked. "The two of us got help for it - him to understand it and deal with me and not try to feed me scrambled eggs."
Today, a successful actress and mother of four, Cathy is free of her eating disorder. In her appearances at colleges and universities, she talks about her experiences in a positive way. "What I try to do is to lure people into the story," she said. Gymnastics is "a sport that demands absolute control, both emotionally and physically." It can be difficult to tell when the quest for excellence crosses over into obsession - when the passion for the sport becomes overshadowed by greed or abusive control. Cathy echoes the thoughts of other experts when she points out "the very thing that makes anybody a great athlete many times predisposes them to become affective-compulsive people." The powerful emotions, interaction with the coach and parents and the strain of reaching for an almost unattainable goal can be more difficult to balance than any part of a gymnastic routine. "Even in the best of situations, it's a little dysfunctional. It's a lot of pressure," she said.
Little Girls in Pretty Boxes
by David M. Edwards and Mary Allen
 Christine Alt
Model Christine Alt (Carol Alt's sister) developed an eating disorder under the pressure to slim down from modeling agencies and clients. "I think that half the women in this world who are plus-size would not be if they never went on a diet."
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 Christy Henrich
A former gymnast named Christy Henrich, 22, of Independence, Missouri, died from multiple organ system failure. The organs in her body-heart, liver, lungs-simply stopped working. Christi trained for years as a gymnast and hoped to make the Olympic team in 1988 and 1992. Christy was told by a U.S. judge that she had to lose weight in order to make the Olympic team.When she failed to qualify in 1988 her weight dropped almost 30 percent, until she was forced to retire from gymnastics in 1991. She died three years laterIn 1988.
 Cynthia French
Singer, Songwriter, and Publisher, has begun touring the country speaking publicly about her experiences with eating disorders, how she overcame them, and what led her to create the fiction novel Humanville.
T”hrough a miracle, I overcame eating disorders and desired to somehow share my story with others who have lived (or are living) in the nightmare I'd been in. I wanted to avoid writing the typical "woe is me" self-help book that might run the risk of being too self-indulgent, so I decided to create a story that would incorporate my experiences, but could be read as a fable.”
Humanville is a spiritually based novel about a young woman in the music industry who tries to become a famous singer. She lives in Humanville, considered to be the most powerful and impressive city in the world. Everyone who lives in this city believe that image, power, and money are the only things that create success. These citizens will stop at nothing to achieve these goals, but don't realize that they are all living in fear (which is the driving force behind Humanville.) They bury this fear with self-abusive behaviors. Desmond Durango (the lead character) buries her fear with eating disorders. She suffers from both anorexia and bulimia.
“The last thing I ever thought I'd do is write a book. That one was nowhere in my dreams. Singing was my only focus. I'm in the music industry, and after many years of living what many might consider to be a charmed life, I found myself continually feeling unfulfilled even after achieving some success. The main reason for this sense of frustration was the fact that I dealt with anorexia and bulimia for most of my teens and adulthood. This was a huge part of my life, and the diseases prevented me from fulfilling my potential and kept me in a virtual prison for many, many years.”
 Courtney Thorne-Smith
Her name is Courtney Thorne-Smith, and she has an eating disorder. The former star of Ally McBeal tells US Weekly that the pressure to be thin ultimately led her to quit the Fox dramedy. "I started undereating, overexercising, pushing myself too hard and brutalizing my immune system," the 33-year-old actress says. "The amount of time I spent thinking about food and being upset about my body was insane."
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