Part of treatment for drugs and alcohol is you abstain from these, but with eating disorders you can't abstain from food so the treatment is longer than drugs and alcohol.
I grew up on antibiotics. Every ailment - sore throats, earaches, flus - warranted a trip to the doctor and in most cases some kind of prescription.
Many women who have anorexia put their hearts in a compromised situation.
It not unusual for women with anorexia to suffer heart attacks.
Anorexia was there for me before I got into modeling, but because of the arena and the demands, the disease really got out of control for me. It's like being an alcoholic and going and being a bartender.
I did some great work with my Calvin Klein ads on the motorcycle. It was really groundbreaking because people hadn't seen a woman actually riding a motorcycle before.
When I consider the deeper meaning of yoga, I realize it's about a lot more than simply performing a variety of postures on a mat.
I think that we can't deny the public's want for balancing out the images that are out there depicting women. Not all of us are 17 and a size two.
We come in many different shapes and sizes, and we need to support each other and our differences. Our beauty is in our differences.
Eating disorders, body dysmorphia and a general dissatisfaction with one's life and body seems to ail too many young people.
Motherhood has brought me many joys and insights, but the new perspective it granted me on the role I had inadvertently played in young women's lives for the 2 decades I spent in the modeling industry was downright sobering.
I've learned to surround myself with women who lift me up and leave me feeling nurtured rather than drained.
Though my parents assured me over and over again that I wasn't stupid or slow, I sensed that my dyslexia was now a stigma on all of us.
I was born in 1968, just eighteen months after my sister Chrisse and just one year after Dad passed the bar exam.
But life inevitably throws us curve balls, unexpected circumstances that remind us to expect the unexpected. I've come to understand these curve balls are the beautiful unfolding of both karma and current.
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.
My own path towards wellness has been a long and dynamic one. It's taught me that healing from the inside out takes time and there can be great value in various sources of guidance.
My doctor felt that the main contributing factor was so many years of malnutrition, especially during my formative years, even before I got into modeling.
In the past, I often found that when I reached out for a fast cure it led me down a slippery slope of more medications, hopeful dependence on the next prescription and ultimately a much longer drawn-out illness.
Exposing any subject that is unpleasant or controversial means risking judgment and making some people feel uncomfortable.
