50 Anorexia Quotes to Explain This Eating Disorder

By Norbert Juma

Master quote curator and editor on a mission to inspire

Published January 3, 2023

Anorexia quotes gathered here are all about what it is like to suffer from Anorexia Nervosa.

Reading these quotes also gives you an idea of how people perceive this disorder.

If someone around you is suffering from anorexia, sharing one of these quotes would be an excellent idea.

Apart from these quotes, we have also discussed Anorexia, its symptoms, and its causes.

Hence, it would be easier for you to understand this disorder and its associated quotes.

So, with no delay, let’s dive in!

What is Anorexia?

Anorexia Nervosa is a disorder related to eating, which is characterized by a fear of excessive weight gain.

People suffering from this disorder try to keep a check on their weight and always want to stay in shape.

Anorexia significantly impacts people’s lives which is shown in a wide range of physical symptoms.

To prevent weight gain, people with anorexia restrict their food intake.

Usually, they try to control their calorie intake by using laxatives, diet aids, or even vomiting after eating something.

In addition, such individuals also indulge in excessive workouts to lose weight.

No matter how much weight is lost, the affected person continues to fear regaining weight.

Symptoms

Here are the major symptoms and physical signs of anorexia:

Extreme thin appearance due to excessive weight loss
Symptoms like fatigue, insomnia, fainting, or dizziness
Fingers develop a bluish discoloration
Hair becomes thinner and rough
Menstruation disturbance
Abdominal pain coupled with constipation
Yellowish or dry skin

Causes

The true cause of anorexia is not yet known.

However, scientists believe that there is a combination of psychological, biological, and environmental factors.

Below, each factor is briefly discussed:

Psychological

A few people suffering from anorexia might show obsessive-compulsive personality traits.

This causes them to follow a strict diet routine and avoid meals even being hungry.

In addition, these people always try to look perfect, which persuades them to become thin.

However, they aren’t satisfied with their physique, causing anxiety and further restrictions on food intake.

Biological

With the biological causes of Anorexia, it is still unknown what types of genes are involved.

However, certain genetic tendencies cause some people to be a perfectionist and sensitive.

Environmental

In a prevailing era, Western cultures promote thinness and sleek body shape.

Models and social media influencers boast their well-shaped appearances, causing others to develop an inferiority complex.

In addition, peer pressure is another reason why people develop a desire to look thin.

Top 10 Anorexia quotes

Listed below are the best Anorexia quotes that you can find in this collection.

1. “Where do you go to get anorexia?” — Shelley Winters

2. “I had a very public battle with anorexia.” — Tracey Gold

3. “You have no idea of the anorexia I saw around me.” — Kate Winslet

4. “Anorexia is not an illness of the body; it is an illness of the mind.” — Lynn Crilly

5. “Anorexia is a real disease. The choice you do have is asking for help.” — Ginger Zee

6. “I don’t want to feel I’m responsible for anorexia across the country.” — Courteney Cox

7. “Anorexia is pernicious and not something which goes away overnight.” — Edward Zwick

8. “I think my anorexia was to do with being a teenager, not being in films.” — Christina Ricci

9. “Many women who have anorexia put their hearts in a compromised situation.” — Carre Otis

10. “Of all the mental illnesses, anorexia has the highest morbidity rate. It’s serious.” — Marti Noxon

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Anorexia quotes to draw your attention

We listed these Anorexia quotes in this section to grab your attention.

11. “I’ve experienced the tabloids when I had anorexia.” — Tracey Gold

12. “Anorexia is an awful thing, but you get yourself into it, and only you can get yourself out of it.” — Celia Imrie

13 “I eat healthily, I do ballet and exercise, and I’m toned and tight, but I take up space, and I don’t aspire to anorexia.” — Rachael Stirling

14. “While I was never diagnosed with anorexia or bulimia at the time, I’ve learned that starving myself and bingeing means I had both.” — Joanna Krupa

15. “Anorexia is more like self-starvation—becoming so obsessed in losing weight and dieting that you ignore your body’s hunger signals.” — Stephanie Watson

16. “Anorexia is a self-destructive thing, and you become stubborn, so when people are trying to tell you something, you get it into your head that they’re against you, and you’re not going to listen.” — Jade Thirlwall

17. “For me, the interesting thing about anorexia is that you show your wound. There’s no hiding it. So my anger and sense of disappointment, all the stuff I was out of touch with, became this visible rebuke to my parents.” — Marti Noxon

18. “For many years, I struggled with how I felt about myself. I hid and harbored very self-destructive eating issues, namely anorexia, which at its worst caused me to lose half of my hair and brought my weight down dramatically.” — Renee Olstead

19. “I didn’t choose to get anorexia. I may have made some childhood-like choices to try to control something. ‘I know what I’ll do: I’ll just not eat.’ That was the initial point, but then it spiraled and became a disease – not a choice by any means.” — Ginger Zee

20. “In New York, if you weigh under 200 pounds and decline so much as a cookie at a co-worker’s party, women will flock to your side, assuring you of your appealing physique. This is how skittish we are about the dangers of anorexia and the pressures of body image.” — Sloane Crosley

Anorexia quotes for Instagram

These Anorexia quotes are truly Instaworthy, so read and share them with your friends and family.

21. “Anorexia is a parasite, not your friend.” — Unknown

22. “I unwittingly became sort of this anorexia spokeswoman.” — Tracey Gold

23. “I’m really tired, incredibly tired of hearing people say that fashion is behind anorexia.” — Bianca Balti

24. “Now I’m being blamed not only for anorexia but for lung cancer. On being a social smoker.” — Kate Moss

25. “Anorexia cannot be cured by treating the physical symptoms alone; it is the mind which must be treated.” — Lynn Crilly

26. “Anorexia is, without doubt, a serious eating disorder, but there is a hell of a lot of mainstream disordered eating going on out there.” — Emma Woolf

27. “A lot of the girls were awful, very catty. It was a competitive environment that I didn’t like. You have no idea of the anorexia I saw around me.” — Kate Winslet

28. “Anorexia Nervosa is not simply a disorder of choice. There is a clear genetic cause for this disorder that we need to incorporate into our understanding of what Anorexia Nervosa is.” — Cynthia M. Bulik

29. “Anorexia taught me to love life and to realize that starving yourself to death is a bloody waste of time. It’s awful, and it hurts so many people around you. It’s a terribly selfish thing to do.” — Celia Imrie

30. “I’ve never had anorexia, but I know it well. I see it on the street, in the gaunt and sunken face, the boney chest, and the spindly arms of an emaciated woman. I’ve come to recognize the flat look of despair, the hopelessness that follows, inevitably, from years of starvation. I think: That could have been [me]. It wasn’t. It’s not.” — Harriet Brown

Anorexia quotes about the issues linked to Anorexia

These Anorexia quotes talk about the problems associated with Anorexia.

31. “I don’t understand anorexia; I’m too greedy to ever not eat… I just can’t do it.” — Keshia Knight Pulliam

32. “Is it too much to say that perhaps anorexia is one way of confronting ‘The Problem of Life’?” — Unknown

33. “I always felt that anorexia was the form of breakdown most readily available to adolescent girls.” — Kate Beckinsale

34. “When I was 19 years old, I came down with anorexia. I had it for about a year before it became public. And it had a lot to do with my self-esteem.” — Tracey Gold

35. “Most dancers have no awareness of how they look; half of them think they’re fat. There is anorexia in the ballet world; there are those things.” — Benjamin Millepied

36. “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.” — Carre Otis

37. “I was anorexic in the ‘60s and ‘70s, although it wasn’t called anorexia then. I thought people would be nicer to me if I looked very small and delicate, so food wasn’t high on my agenda. But it is now.” — Marianne Faithfull

38. “I used to refer to myself as a ‘theoretical anorexic,’ just as crazy when it came to body image, but saved by a lack of self-discipline. My daughters do everything better than I do – they’re smarter, more beautiful, happier. What if they end up better at anorexia, too?” — Ayelet Waldman

39. “Anorexia is a response to cultural images of the female body – waiflike, angular – that both capitulates to the ideal and also mocks it, strips away all the ancillary signs of sexuality, strips away breasts and hips and butt and leaves in their place a garish caricature, a cruel cartoon of flesh and bone.” — Caroline Knapp

40. “In high school, I had a couple of girlfriends who had very extreme eating disorders. Anorexia and bulimia. And in college as well. It’s just heartbreaking. As someone going through it, it’s heartbreaking. And as a friend who’s helping a friend going through it, it’s heartbreaking. It’s a real, real disease.” — Katie Lowes

Some other Anorexia quotes

Here are a few other Anorexia quotes for you to look at.

41. “In other words, what if anorexia was treated as if it was a way to approach what are essentially ‘spiritual’ issues?” — Unknown

42. “I was struggling with anorexia, and one of the biggest problems with an eating disorder is you don’t realize you have it. And you can’t heal until you realize there’s a problem.” — Lindsey Stirling

43. “What if anorexia is, on a deeper level, one way of confronting other problems – such as, for example, the problems of “how to be ‘pure,’” “how to be perfect,” “how to be real” and so on?” — Unknown

44. “Anorexia, you starve yourself. Bulimia, you binge and purge. You eat huge amounts of food until you’re sick, and then you throw up. And anorexia, you just deny yourself. It’s about control.” — Tracey Gold

45. “For the longest time, Indian women have been okay with being curvy. But I think the modern Indian woman needs to get toned. I don’t endorse being thin. Anorexia and bulimia are a reality in India because everybody wants to be thin.” — Bipasha Basu

46. “A misperception about anorexia is that you don’t eat. Not true. Maybe you eat just 500 calories a day. It would be easy for me to say, ‘Why didn’t my parents notice?’ But I didn’t want them to. I made sure to eat half a sandwich around my parents.” — Brittany Snow

47. “Anorexia and bulimia seem to be getting much more common in boys, men, and women of all ages and socioeconomic backgrounds; they are also becoming more common in racial groups previously thought to be impervious to the problem.” — Marya Hornbacher

48. “I struggled with restricting and purging. It is not really anorexia or bulimia. It is more anorexia than bulimia, but it doesn’t fit super neatly into a box, which I learned through my years of treatment that more and more eating disorders don’t fit neatly into a box.” — Malika Andrews

49. “I initially decided to speak about my anorexia and bulimia, partly out of selfish motivation. I felt I had been scrutinised for my weight and thought, ‘At least judge and criticise me on the facts.’ There was freedom with that. Now it’s out there, and I just get on with life. I’m at peace with things.” — Lucy Davis

50. “I was my thinnest when doing 35 fashion shows a week in different countries because I didn’t have time to eat. I’ve never bought the idea that models in fashion magazines cause readers to have anorexia and bulimia. And you can’t be a model if you’ve got those conditions anyway, because you’ll get acne and hair all over your body.” — Jerry Hall