Eating Disorder News

American Idol runner-up Katherine McPhee spoke with CNN and People Magazine about her experience with bulimia in a recent interview.

McPhee says her illness began during her high school years in Los Angeles, where she was always concerned about her appearance. She recalls starving herself and exercising to an extreme. The pattern continued. “I was bingeing my whole life away for days at a time,” she told People. She says the bottom came about the time she auditioned for “American Idol.”

Concerned that her vomiting was damaging her vocal cords, McPhee decided to get help.

Kennedy Pieken is seven years old and has been anorexic since age four.

When asked why she wasn’t eating…”I don’t know. Because my brain was telling me not to eat.”

Kennedy’s mom, Jodi said, “The way she was going, I was afraid she was gonna die. I mean her hair was falling out. She looked awful.”

There has been increasing awareness of pediatric eating disorders among very young children, along with the possibility of genetically inherited biological predisposition toward having an eating disorder. Kennedy’s mother, Jodi, is herself a recovering anorexic.

A recent study by researchers at Yale University compared the eating habits of 173 obese men and women. Participants who ate more frequent meals, and especially those who ate breakfast, weighed less, and had significantly fewer binge eating episodes than those who did not regularly eat three meals per day.

While this particular study focused on obese participants, it is also generally healthy nutrition advice to eat breakfast and more frequent meals and snacks, spreading out food intake across the entire day rather than the traditional three meals per day.

Among the study group, less than half of the obese patients ate breakfast regularly.

Jeanene Harlick describes her experience with finding suitable outpatient treatment as a recovering anorexic in a recent issue of the San Francisco Chronicle.

“How about prunes, could you commit to three prunes a day? Or two?” Strain asked me.

HealthNewsDigest.com summarizes a recent feature at ElleGirl magazine which polled 10,000 girls from around the world on how they felt about their own body:

60% of girls in American have a positive body image, opposed to Korea where only 17% have a healthy body image

The number one aim of polled U.S. girls aged 11-17 years is to be thinner, rather than smarter, funnier, or friendlier

While 86% of Russian girls chose being healthy over being thin, only 70% of American girls felt the same way

Only 18% of American girls have used diet pills or drinks to make you slimmer, as opposed to a staggering 68% of Korean girls