http://au.news.yahoo.com/queensland/a/- ... her-sleep/

Warning: mentions numbers. I'll white out the actual weight here, but i am leaving the BMI.
Eating disorders can kill. Even if you are in recovery. A medical consult is always a good thing during refeeding to monitor your health and you should ALWAYS see a doctor if you expereince any unusual symptoms.


ANOREXIC TEEN COVER MODEL DIES IN HER SLEEP
Yahoo!7
May 1, 2012, 12:34 pm


A teenage model with a bright future ahead of her has died in her sleep weighing less than 44kg.

Bethany Wallace, 19, died in her grandmother's home after a three year battle with anorexia.


Bethany's struggles with her weight began at the age of 16 when a case of glandular fever saw her lose weight which she never wanted to put back on.

A cover model since the age of 12, Bethany's smiling face adorned the cover of well known British kids’ magazines, including Pop Girl and Girl Talk.

She appeared to have the world at her feet, but could never shake the feeling that she wasn't beautiful enough.

"She would say she was fat but she was so beautiful – she didn't realise how beautiful she was. She had up days and down days. It was like Jekyll and Hyde", her father Clive told The Daily Mail.

"I tried to warn her that her organs would fail but she just said: “Don't be silly”. If you mentioned food it would start an argument", he said.

Bethany's friends described her as a bright young girl, who did well in school, but would only pick at her bread when they went out together.

At home, Bethany's parents watched nervously as she ate with her family, knowing she would later simply bring her dinner back up again.

At the time of her death, Bethany's body mass index was a dangerously low 16.1 – too low even for the standards set down by the fashion industry.

But nothing could convince Bethany to gain weight.

"It was so hard to get help”, her mother Cathy said. “I went to the doctor's a few times on my own."

"I asked them to call her in for something else and then bring up the eating disorder. But Beth was not a child so I could not force her to get help."

Bethany's body eventually gave up the fight earlier this month when her heart simply stopped beating while she slept at her grandmother's home.

Her death is made even more tragic by the fact that she had finally begun to turn the corner.

Bethany has started counselling for her problems, and was slowly gaining weight, her father says.

But it came too late for Bethany, whose death is now the subject of an investigation.

A spokesman for the British eating disorder charity BEAT, said Bethany’s death could be used as a lesson for other young girls.

"Our hearts go out to Bethany's family."

"Eating disorders are devastating illnesses and it is particularly poignant that she had been making progress in her battle to beat her illness."

"Eating disorders take a huge toll on the body over a period of time."

Fuck.

I... well... fuck.

Thanks for sharing this, Elle. I'm sure there's a much more articulate way of saying that, but 'fuck' seems as good as anything else.

That makes me feel sick. It's sad that so often people die when they are trying to get better--it's like after all the abuse, the body just doesn't know how to handle what is actually good for it.

And I'm sorry, but I want to call bullshit on the part where they say her BMI was "too low even for the standards set down by the fashion industry." I don't doubt there are many, many professional fashion models who are as dangerously underweight as Bethany was, and from stories I have heard, agents and designers turn a blind eye to the fact that it clearly isn't healthy. It's unacceptable on every level, but I refuse to believe that the fashion industry would give half a shit if a model was clearly too thin to be well.

Sad.
Sickening.

I agree with you, Hannah.


And I don't even have to get started thinking about the portrayl of beauty in the media and what kind of message that maysends to the public.
It's enough to think about the people who work in that industry to be angry.
There's such a thing as occupational health and safety and whoever presses their employees to become sick in order to stay in business is in violation of this.