Christie Swadling is hardly the first person to idolize a Victoria’s Secret model. But the teen’s obsession nearly turned deadly when her weight plummeted to 66 pounds in 2014 after she became anorexic in an attempt to resemble fellow Aussie Miranda Kerr.
“Photoshopped adverts of models like Miranda Kerr definitely started off my body image issues, because you think that’s how you’re meant to be,” 18-year-old Swadling told Daily Mail Australia.
“I became skinnier than those models and because of my disease, stopped thinking about the models altogether and became obsessed with just losing more and more weight.”
Swadling’s destructive relationship with food began in childhood, when classmates would bully her for being chubby.
“My family never had a healthy diet, I was always the kid that everyone was jealous of as I had the chocolate, the chips, the McDonald’s,” says the teen from East Gosford, New South Wales, about an hour and a half north of Sydney.
In high school, the teen soon picked up a passion for sports, becoming a fanatical runner and a competitive sprinter on the track team. But her obsession with exercising and counting calories quickly turned into an eating disorder, causing the already lean teen to drop 28 pounds.
Weighing less than 70 pounds, the teen lost all energy.
“I was eating next to nothing, maybe two meals less than 300 calories and there was a devil in my head telling me to be skinny constantly.”
Her family had her admitted to the hospital twice, but she was discharged both times. It wasn’t until she collapsed from malnutrition on her 17th birthday that she was ready to change.
“I looked in the mirror and felt disgusted at what I saw and became aware that I was slowly killing myself,” she says.
In the months since, Swadling has transformed her Instagram account into a mecca for healthy eating, featuring meals comprising mainly fresh fruits and vegetables per the 80/10/10 raw food diet she now follows.
She has returned to exercising as well — though she now focuses on yoga and Pilates rather than excessive cardio.
A YouTube video she released in August 2014, “Anorexia Nervosa almost killed me,” which documents the toll her eating disorder took on her body, has racked up more than 700,000 views.
“Anarexia [sic] Nervosa almost killed me. Its [sic] a disease and only you can save yourself beacause [sic] its [sic] worth it. Don’t let ‘ana’rexia [sic] ruin your life, take control,” she cautions in the video.
“I’ve had plenty of young girls tell me that I’m saving their lives,” Swadling says of the impact her story is having on social media.
“I’ve helped so many already and I know that if I put my mind to this, I could help so many more.”