Everywhere I look there are skinny women

I am an entertainment junkie. I love sitcoms, soaps, dramas, movies, celebrities. Maybe it's because I wanted to be an actress or maybe it is just the times we live in. I love the celebrity gossip, I love to see who's wearing what. I love it all! I used to pour over all of the magazines and I would see these actresses and actors and wanted to know everything about them.

Except...


I looked at the magazines and I thought,
"She has it all! She has the career I want, the life I want, the body I want!" I wanted to be just like them.
I thought that if I could look like her, all of my troubles would melt away. I thought that if I was thinner, I could get everything I wanted...a career in show business, love, acceptance from everyone. People would admire me and want to be like me.



I was deluded. I realize now that I was trying to avoid real life. I didn't like the way things were, life seemed so out of control. I had been diagnosed with Diabetes, my husband had to work two jobs to take care of us, both of my children had health struggles as infants, my toddler was diagnosed with a moderately severe hearing loss and so on and so on. I needed something in my life that I had control over. Something that I thought would change my circumstances.

By trying to be "like them" I was avoiding real life. I thought that I had control. I thought that by controlling what went into my body and how much exercise I did would give me power. I also liked the comments I was getting regarding my weight loss. I thought I was getting the life I had always wanted.

I was wrong. I was losing control by the minute. Each time I chose not to eat, or to binge, or to over-exercise, Edith got her claws into me a little deeper. Until finally she totally consumed my every waking thought as well as my nightmares.

I thought about food night and day. I thought about my "disgusting" body at all times. Every time I would be around other people, all I could think was "they must think I am the fattest thing alive. I must disgust them." So I isolated myself.

Trying to be thin and like all of those celebrities I admired was slowly killing me.

I know now that when people meet me, they aren't thinking about my size or what I am wearing or how my hair looks. They are thinking about what I think about them. The majority of people out there have something about themselves that they don't like.

You start out happy that you have no hips or boobs. All of a sudden you get them, and it feels sloppy. Then just when you start liking them, they start drooping.
- Cindy Crawford

I'd kill myself if I was as fat as Marilyn Monroe.
Elizabeth Hurley

I look at myself and pick out the things I don't like. No matter how much I work out, I never get muscle tone in my butt and hip area.
Tyra Banks

It is not a bad thing to like celebrity gossip and watching who's wearing what. The problem comes when it becomes an obsession and a way to completely escape one's life. It is good to remember that even those that we admire have issues of their own. They are, after all, only human. Just like me!