My Body Is An Inspiration To Women In Their Twenties…

39 year old Valeria Levitin is a walking skeleton after years of anorexia reduced her weight to just 4 stone.

Valeria developed the eating disorder as a teenager after years of her mother weighing her as a child and being taunted at school about her weight. She said her mother was terrified of her growing up obese like her relatives and had to curtail her diet.

At 16, and weighing 10 stone, Valeria moved to Chicago with her parents. Desperate to fit in at a new school, she thought that if she lost weight, she would be accepted and liked. 

By the time she was 23, Valeria’s dress size had plummeted from a healthy size 12 to a tiny size 6. Deciding to become a model made the situation even worse, as she was told she was still too fat and can’t make it in the modelling industry. Out of desperation to be skinny, she restricted her diet even further, cutting out sugar or carbohydrates.

By the age of 24 and weighing just 6 stone, she was banned from dancing over concerns she would injure herself. Now having cut out certain foods for so long, her body is intolerant to them and can’t process them even if she wanted to.

Says she is horrified by the letters she receives from girls wanting weight loss tips.

According to The Sun, the 39 year old said, “I have received emails from young girls who want me to teach them how to be like me.

“All the letters I've had are from women, mainly in their twenties, who see me as some kind of inspiration.” Instead she desperately wants her emaciated figure to be a severe warning about the dangers of extreme dieting.

She says she wants to share her story to prevent other people falling victim to the same fate, saying anorexia has made her ‘lonely, unattractive and repulsive for the people around me.’

Single for a decade, she says relationships are difficult as she is unable to do the normal things that couples do, as going to restaurants.