Plus Size Vogue Supermodel Crystal Renn to says to World...

I WAS 7ST STICK INSECT MODEL WITH LITTLE WORK ...
NOW I'M 11ST SIZE 16 AND A SUPERSTAR

EXCLUSIVE: CATWALK CRYSTAL HITS OUT OVER SKINNY GIRLS

By Sharon Van Geuns
CRYSTAL Renn is top fashion house Dolce & Gabbana's newest modelling sensation... and she's a curvy Size 16 who weighs 11st 7lb.
Crystal Renn, 20, has appeared in Vogue, is the current darling of designer Jean-Paul Gaultier and has stormed the catwalk at Paris Fashion Week.
Ironically Crystal has only found fame AFTER gaining weight.
When London Fashion Week starts tomorrow, most of the models will be stick-thin. But pressure is growing for the policy to change.
Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell yesterday called for a ban on super-thin stars, warning that ordinary girls feel under pressure to starve themselves to get the same look. It comes after Madrid's Fashion Week banned the skinniest girls and South American model Luisel Ramos, 22, died from heart failure moments after stepping off a catwalk.
Crystal is all for the ban. She says: "I'm glad the fashion industry has begun to change and use healthy-sized women. It's not a moment too soon."

The industry took a different view three years ago. Crystal, 5ft 9in, had starved and exercised herself down to seven stone and Size 4, losing 4st 6lb after a modelling scout said she needed to shrink if she was to make it big. But despite her stick-insect size, she still struggled to find fame, and developed worrying health problems. Her hair thinned and began to fall out, her skin was spotty and dry and her periods stopped. She knew things had to change after she began to gain weight despite almost nothing thing. She says: "My agents would say 'Maybe you should go on a diet'. I'm going, 'You must be kidding!' There was nothing left to cut out."

Crystal changed agents, joining Ford Models which has represented the likes of Rachel Hunter and now looks after supermodels such as Erin O'Connor and Paris Hilton. They suggested she become a Plus Size model - and she has since featured in spreads in Vogue and Vanity Fair, appeared on the catwalk for Jean-Paul Gaultier in Paris and will be in the November issue of German Vogue.

Florida-born Crystal had been told to lose nearly 40 per cent of her body weight by a modelling scout when she was just 14. "The scout told me I had potential, but that I had to lose 10 inches off my hips and about four and a half stones. I just said 'sure' and so did my mother because we did not really grasp what that meant. I was young and naive. I cut out bread and would eat egg whites instead of yolks and low-fat dressing. In three months I lost 20lb. The scout told me I was doing great and to keep going. That is when it got very extreme. I began counting
everything to the last calorie."

The maximum number of calories a day Crystal would eat was 800. But she would often survive on around 600 (the recommended amount for women is 2,000). She lived on high-fibre cereal, vegetables and lettuce.

She exercised obsessively, working out seven days a week for up to three hours. She says: "I also drank obscene amounts of water and although I never got into laxatives, the cereal had that effect. No sugar, no fat, no protein, nothing. I kept notes of what I ate and put pictures of models on my bedroom wall so I'd see them the minute I woke up. And if I went over my limit of 600 calories, I'd go to the gym immediately. "

It took her two years to lose the weight and at her skinniest she weighed seven stone. "Emaciated as I was, I never thought I had an eating disorder," she says. "For me, it was more like a marketing plan. My whole philosophy was, 'Thin is a job requirement. .. you need to act professional' ."

Between 16 and 17 she stayed super skinny, but then the weight began to creep back on.

After working 15-hour days in the studio she was struggling to put in the hours at the gym. She says: "I'd work out past midnight, sleep, and do it again."

Crystal says she will never go back to being skinny - and wants to urge young girls not to do anything as drastic as she did in a bid to make it big in the fashion world..

She says: "I was not happy. Now I am. And if I gain weight, I gain weight. I eat healthily, but I eat what I want. I want. really like turkey burgers and crab cakes. I love pizza and ice cream!"

She adds: "The biggest lesson I learned is to be who I am. The happiness I feel inside comes through to the camera now, you can see it. It has made me a more successful model."

Article courtesy of www.sundaymirror.co.uk