It seems like British model Iskra Lawrence wants to change the perception of the term “eating disorder.”
She recently told Health about her eating disorder problem, adding that she wants people who are struggling with it.
Lawrence specifically wants people to understand what is an eating disorder. She told Health, “We think of ‘eating disorder’ and immediately go to a white anorexic woman, but that’s not the case. Eating disorders have many different forms.”
The 30-year-old struggled with an eating disorder when she was a teenager and trying to break into the modeling industry.
She said, “I was kind of thrown into this fashion world where I was pitted against other models and other women. It was purely based on appearance. That immediately made me very super focused on the outside, on the superficial things, especially on size.”
Lawrence said the obsession with what size she was and how her body looked compared to other models took a toll on her mental and physical health.
“I was a US [size] six, if that. Maybe a four,” she explained. “And I was looking at myself in the mirror thinking that I was huge.”
She added, “Fighting against my own development into a woman at the time of those teenage years was so detrimental to my mental health. It was a constant battle.”
Lawrence recalled that she was so weak at the time that sometimes she had no energy to go to class because she did not eat enough food.
However, as her career progressed, Lawrence began to appreciate her body in its natural form. She said her motherhood also helped. She started to love her body even more after giving birth to her first child last year.
“Definitely without a shadow of a doubt the fact that I was able to create a human: that just feels miraculous,” she added. The article was published on Health.
