Does skinny mean happy?

If you’re thinking of, or already dieting to squeeze into that perfect bodycon dress for New Year’s, think again. I’ve been the queen of diets. Tried them all, starved myself and went to hell and back just to fit in the smallest size possible. I have a huge pile of books ranging from macrobiotic diets to the Karl Lagerfeld way and those so called “healthy eating habits that should develop into a lifestyle”. Not gonna happen. I can honestly tell you that if you’re not genetically very skinny, you won’t get there in a healthy way. You can be slim and very healthy by eating good foods and reducing the bad ones to a minimum, but model-like skinny you will only get by starving yourself and becoming addicted to working out. That doesn’t mean you should embrace your curves and splurge on pizza and junk food everyday. You should just understand how your body works and try to maintain a balance without becoming obsessed. Obsession is dangerous and can lead to eating disorders which are very nasty. Trust me, I’ve been there. And if you don’t believe, you can read my story that I’ve submitted for the ELLE Talent Contest this year. I hope you’ll find it useful.

More than perfect

I guess every woman goes through this at some point in her life. For me, it was late last year, on a gloomy November evening. I was crying on the kitchen floor of my flat in south-east London. There was a half-empty jar of peanut butter in my hand. What had begun as an attempt to do the usual Tracy Anderson workout had ended in tears and physical pain after gorging on greasy, forbidden food.

After months of living on raw carrots and salad leaves, I didn’t have the energy to lift a leg, let alone do 40 minutes of dance cardio. But I wasn’t on a diet; I wasn’t one of those silly girls who starve themselves to death. I was enjoying – or so I thought – a healthy lifestyle, eating vegetables, seeds, the odd bit of fruit. No more than 700 calories a day. No meat, no dairy, no cooked or processed food, no sweets or bread, nothing but fresh food; quantities measured and calories counted. But after four months of carrots and apples, my body was starting to betray me.

I missed my period for three of those four months. My doctor told me I was suffering from amenorrhea, caused by weight loss. But that was ridiculous: I was far from anorexic. Nothing like those 45 kilo girls on the runway. Surely a 17.7 BMI didn’t mean I was underweight? I mean, I didn’t look skinny. I wasn’t taking pills, or throwing up. I was just a rational 20-year-old girl in charge of her life… wasn’t I?

The truth is, I thought I could be perfect. Of course, I failed. I failed because my idea of perfection bore no relation to the person I really was. I’d been hijacked by a Barbie ideal of beauty since I was five, and never shaken it off. (Perhaps I’d replaced Barbie with Lara Stone). It didn’t matter that everyone told me I was beautiful, special, had a great body and so on. My response was always the same. “ I know it sounds superficial, but I need to be skinny to be happy.”

I argued with people who said I was a victim of the media. And I refused to blame the ten years in a Romanian ballet school where I’d traded chocolate for vegetables, and was screamed at every day for being fat. At the time it didn’t seem much of a sacrifice. (I only discovered later that what it actually meant was getting used to lubricating every mouthful of food with a generous dollop of guilt.)

It didn’t occur to me that jumping for joy when I fit into a pair of SX trousers was absurd. Nor did it occur to me that wearing heels for a walk in the park, or not sitting down on the tube because I wasn’t burning calories, was odd behaviour. But it was odd. As odd as checking a restaurant’s menu online before going out and ending up drinking still water anyway, while my friends were enjoying dinner. And as the weight crept back on, and my depression started to bite, I was in Hell.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of soul-searching, I got it. It was a lesson. I had to understand and learn something from all this. At first I thought it was about accepting and loving myself for who I was and all that kind of frothy stuff you read in self-help books. But it was about more than that: I now had the opportunity to decide the sort of person I wanted to become. I could spend the rest of my life comparing myself to models and feeling like the ugly duckling, locating my self-confidence in my dress size. Or I could forge my own identity and start living. Health for me was suddenly about feeling good.

I’d become a victim of obsession because I’d been looking outwards instead of examining inwards. Punishing myself for culinary indulgences wasn’t balance – it was madness. But the madness, the pain and the breakdown gave me strength to realise that I was in hock to an impossible, homogenous ideal of beauty. The day I realised that I saw optimism flood back in. And I felt hot.

I still love skinny models. But because I don’t take myself so seriously anymore, I’m not devoted to them. I’m not trying to imitate them. Because I have a sense of humour and perspective now, I can laugh at the thought of Lara having a bad day or looking ghastly in the Daily Mail.

That’s what’s made me determined to prepare for the day I will write, photograph, style and surround myself with beautiful girls. I should say: with other beautiful girls. Because I’m now ready to enjoy fashion in all its wondrous beauty, creativity, danger and excitement – without feeling like a slave to it. (Although I admit: I certainly haven’t shaken off my weak will when it comes to pretty dresses or handbags.) Maybe the runway only has one size, but the real world has plenty of them. And size ten isn’t that bad after all.

When you shatter your idols, you discover something even more compelling standing behind them. You discover you.