Karen Carpenter RIP

A friend of mine was alarmed at my attempt to diet and said "Karen Carpenter died when she did Stillman's."

Some nut said she was too chubby as a teen. She lost 25 pounds in a matter of weeks on a Water Diet to get down to 120 pounds (a healthy weight for her.)

To keep her weight down a doctor suggested she do the then popular Stillman Diet. She did lose weight to a healthy amount BUT then she carried on! Stillman's is a 2 week diet. It is dangerous to do it long term.

Karen Caprenter was an anorexic. She had mental health problems.The diet may have been attractive to her because it has positive almost instant results.

Anorexia is not about the food as much as it is about controlling one's life that seems spiralling out of control. Perhaps she felt this way.

In 1967 she started out on a water diet. Presumably under the eye of a physician. She went form 145 to 120 in a short period of time, She often complained that she hated her hour glass figure. By 1975 she began throwing up. She also took dozens of thyroid pills per day.

By the 1980's she was 108 pounds (underweight.) She had several hospitalizations and had gained 25 pounds (to get to 108) via a treatment called hyper alimentation.

She had a long history of straving herself.

I read that she weighed 60 pounds at one point. Other reports say she was 80 pounds. Either way that is severe weight loss for someone who was only 5 foot 5 inches tall. She was about 35 pounds underweight before her last hospitalization; prior to her death from cardiac arrest (due to complications of anoerxia) in 1983 at the age of 32.

So she had a long history of straving herself.

I do not plan to starve myself! I like food. I lke to eat. I like the social aspect of eating with family & friends.