Dieting to death: Miss World Singapore finalist was 'walking skeleton'

Svelte and beaming with confidence Angeline Yap Siling is all geared up to win the crown for Miss World Singapore coming Saturday.

But this finalist was once a 'walking skeleton' in her mother's words.

She was weak, fragile and set on a dangerous and perhaps irreversible downward spiral in life.

For seven long years, Angeline battled with anorexia nervosa (an eating disorder).

At her lowest, the beauty queen weighed just 33kg.

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Not only did she lose a lot of weight, she lost nearly all her friends and almost her life.

She harmed herself, degrading her appearance and also tried to kill herself.

It all began when her relatives joked about her eating habits and asked if she was eating her sister's food.

Miss Yap, who has an identical twin sister, was always the bigger and taller of the pair growing up.

In Secondary 3, she started comparing her body with those of her sister and her schoolmates in her all-girls school.

She started feeling fat, not pretty enough and not good enough like the rest.

So the 15-year-old started starving herself- dieting to death.

Only after the death of her close friend, who also had anorexia, did Miss Yap finally decide to turn her life around.

Now weighing a healthy 47kg for her 1.64m frame, the 27-year-old is hoping to win the Miss World Singapore 2014 crown against 19 other finalists.

She told The New Paper: "I wanted to join the pageant because I know I have the potential to win and I want to use this as a platform to reach out to young girls with eating disorders."

What is Anorexia:

Anorexia is a serious eating disorder that affects women and men of all ages. It can damage your health and even threaten your life.

For some people, restricting their food and weight can be a way of controlling areas of life that feel out of their control and their body image can come to define their entire sense of self worth. It can also be a way of expressing emotions that may feel too complex or frightening such as pain, stress or anxiety.

Restrictive dieting and excessive exercise can be contributing factors to the onset of Anorexia. Women and girls with Anorexia may use dieting behaviour in a bid to achieve a culturally constructed thin ideal whereas men may over exercise and control their diet to achieve a muscular body.

It is commonly accepted that Anorexia is more frequently diagnosed in females across the ages. However, a recent population study has suggested that in adolescents, there are an equal number of males and females suffering from this illness.

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