Eating disorders can be deadly.

This American concept is the opposite of positive thinking – executives are encouraged to come up with worst-case scenarios and then develop strategies for dealing with them.

My spending was out of control, my first flush of fame was in decline and my body decided to get a grip in its own way – by banning food. I could put as much as I wanted into my mouth, and I sometimes spooned entire gateaux into my face. But within minutes I would run to the men’s room, to make sure the calories never hit my digestive system. I nearly died. I was a walking skeleton. I thank God that something in my mind saw the insanity of what my body was doing, and I was able to beat the disorder. There’s a crazy media notion that you can never be too thin, and it’s simply not true. I was delighted to see a new book by Harvard professor Rose Frisch – the boring title is Female Fertility and the Body Fat Connection, but the message is dynamite. Women whose fat levels fall too low stop having periods. If the fat keeps coming off, these women can become infertile – permanently. And Professor Frisch is not talking about people with life-threatening anorexia or bulimia – her research was based on studies of mainstream dieters, the women who want to look like catwalk models. But as mums-to-be Kate Moss and Victoria Beckham have shown, some women are naturally skinny, and that doesn’t impair their fertility. The warning is clear. You have to be yourself, not some media mirror image. And that applies not just to what you eat, but to everything you do.