diets for teenage girl athletes

00:03christie: i just didn’t care about life, the only thing you care about is exercisingand your next meal and how less calories is it going to be in that meal like its just,it’s an obsession. 00:20comm: many teenage girls are influenced by models on the runway and in magazines, butor christie swadling, it developed into an

diets for teenage girl athletes, obsession that almost claimed her life. 00:31christie: i always wanted to be one of the victoria’s secret models, and i would watchtheir shows, i would read their books. i would read the magazines and what they would eat.their diet plans, i was just so obsessed with

it and it got to a point where like i wasobsessed that i didn’t look like them. 00:49christie: i really wanted to look like miranda kerr. her waist. her tiny, tiny waist andher legs. how she had the thigh gap. i just had nothing that she had. 01:02comm: christie started dieting when she was just 12 years old. and by the time she was16, was putting her health at serious risk. 01:11christie: i started over exercising, i was probably exercising for about three to fourhours a day, probably two hours in the morning, two hours in the afternoon. i lost so manyfriends, i was fighting with my boyfriend.

my mum thought i was a different person. 01:28christie: the moment i realised i had gone too far was my seventeenth birthday, i collapsedthat night and i went straight to hospital. i was so dangerously underweight and i waspractically on my deathbed. 01:44comm: the hospitalisation was a wake up call for christie and with the support of her family,she embarked on a high-carb diet and gradually started to gain weight. 01:57christie: i was admitted to hospital because my vitals, they were dangerously low. andthe doctor actually told me that he’s surprised

i was still living and he’s surprised iwasn’t admitted there earlier. 02:10christie: i lost most of my teenage life like through an eating disorder. 02:14fiona: it was really heartbreaking. it was very hard. i thought maybe i had done somethingwrong as a parent. i didn’t know what to do. i didn’t really know about anorexia.yeah it was very hard. i had a lot of help from family and friends it was very hard tosit there and watch her kill herself slowly. 02:41comm: now, eight months on, christie has gained 2 stone and is helping other people sufferingfrom eating disorders online.

02:50christie: the first youtube video i made is called anorexia nervosa almost killed me,i wish someone had helped me, there was that person there that i could talk to and therewasn’t i just feel like it would have been a lot easier and for me to give someone – totell them what to do to help them out. i just feel like i’m taking so much weight offtheir shoulders. i’m almost like saving someone’s life. for me to be that personfor someone to actually come to when they need me, it makes me feel great. 03:22comm: and she is now spewing out about the dangers of overly skinny models flauntingtheir stick thin physiques.

03:30christie: i reckon the model figure, the perfect figure, it’s sending horrible messages,and it’s nearly impossible as a teenager going through puberty and all that, it’salmost impossible to get to that low weight. you’d have to have an eating disorder toactually get to that weight. 03:50christie: going through that mindset, it’s made me the person that i am today and i knowwhat life i would rather and i know it’s this one, it’s the happy life it’s thelife that i’m living, it’s actually enjoying life, not hating it. 04:06christie: there is loads of stuff that i would

love to be in the future and do in the futureand i know that having an eating disorder and being that sick, i was not able to getto there, that was my turning point. that’s why i wanted to change.