"Ireally gotta start losing weight before spring break," a 15-year-old from Long Island wrote in her blog on Xanga.com, a social networking site. "Basically today I went 24 hours without food and then I ate green beans and a little baked ziti. Frankly I'm proud of myself, not to mention the 100 situps on the yoga ball and the 100 I'll do before sleep Yey for me."
A Californian, 18, wrote: "I'm at 108 pounds (49kg) right now. Spring break is in about 3 weeks and I want to be down to at least 99 pounds (44.9kg) -100 pounds (45.4kg). That can easily be done."
From a writer identifying herself as Workhardgetskinny: "I only did 100 crunches but I'm trying to do 200 more before bed. 2 full days till spring break!"
The discussion took place in one of Xanga's blog rings, a string of Web logs connected by a common theme, in this case a spring break challenge, in which young women pledged to shed a lot of weight before their trips to the beaches of Florida and Mexico.
Their home pages were decorated with images of gaunt supermodels and pipe-cleaner-thin celebrities like Nicole Richie. Declarations like "Food Is Poison" and "Diet Coke Is Love" blared like banner advertisements across screens. Participants also shared their daily indulgences. One writer confessed to eating "one cracker, one strawberry and a little bit of soup" in a 24-hour period. Another recounted a lunch that consisted of a slice of mango and a stick of gum. For most students spring break represents the promise of a beer-soaked respite from Northern cold and midterm stress, a time to let go and revive. But for a subculture of students with eating disorders, this annual weeklong bacchanalia, unfolding across Florida, Mexico and the Caribbean during March and this month, represents the summit of deprivation and self-denial.
Though not widely discussed -- sufferers of eating disorders often spend years in denial about their condition, and therapists treating them can rarely isolate any single reason for these complex psychological syndromes -- those who treat eating disorders say spring break is one of the most dangerous times of the year for young women struggling with their weight and eating.
"This is a trigger time for youth to start to obsess about weight and body image," said Margo Maine, a clinical psychologist in West Hartford, Connecticut, who specializes in eating disorders. She said she observes a spike in weight anxiety every year among her younger patients before spring break. "By the beginning of February people are starting to talk about their bodies and getting ready for spring break. Even girls who are simply around that talk can't get away from it."
The fantasy of achieving a "bikini-ready" body on a deadline is an intoxicating incentive, according to those who have experienced and observed the behavior. And in a school setting, in which tightly knit groups of young women are all vacationing together, diets easily become competitive or, as Maine put it, contagious.
For Ashley Filipp, a recent college graduate and recovering anorexic and bulimic, the warmup to spring break when she was a student in Colorado represented, she said, "the big time of the year." She added, "You start realizing that you have been packing on the winter pounds, the insulation, and now it's time to lose them."
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