Wearing baggy jeans with stretch pants underneath will give you a little extra bulk Wear sweaters that are a couple of sizes too big. When going to doctors, wear heavy, layered clothes and, if possible, try to put on light ankle weights It is risky, so make sure they are tight and won’t fall off. “Skeletal images do something to our emotions that is ideal for these websites,” says Professor Treasure. “They are shocking, but very striking and provocative.” They also have tips on losing weight and how to hide signs of an eating disorder.

“We are developing our own website that we hope will be an antidote to the pro-anorexia sites.”Just how damaging the sites can be is shown by the typical content. Most contain galleries of models and celebrities that appear very thin. “We know the service providers keep trying to get rid of them, but they keep springing up,” says Professor Janet Treasure, a leading eating-disorders specialist at the Institute of Psychiatry. Because of the tremendous potential of pro-anorexia sites to harm and pro-recovery sites to help, awareness of the existence and the content of both of these resources is essential for professionals who evaluate and treat patients with emerging or established eating disorders.”In America, the National Eating Disorders Association is also concerned and has been trying to get sites stopped: “With the pressures to be thin in our culture, these sites are like placing a loaded gun in the hands of someone suicidal,” says its spokeswoman, Holly Hoff.As a result of such pressure, some internet service providers do actively discourage the sites.

Technique and nutrition sections prescribed practices for rapid weight loss, and definitions of anorexia were detailed to evade clinical detection. “Pro-anorexia sites provided specific instructions for initiating and maintaining anorexia nervosa. In it, Dr Eric Chesley and colleagues from the paediatric division of Rochester University in New York looked at 100 international pro-anorexia sites, and compared them to other, mainstream health sites dealing with the same condition. Some people are genetically predisposed to eating disorders and all they need is an environmental trigger such as these websites.

There are now an alarming number of these pro-anorexia sites that misguide teenagers in particular into thinking that becoming thin by starving or vomiting will bring happiness. Once they start, it’s very hard to stop, even when they’ve lost the weight they wanted to lose.”The scale of the threat from these sites is shown by new research being presented this month at an international eating-disorder conference. They say that the sites normalise and encourage dangerous behaviour among those vulnerable to eating disorders.”They are a disturbing problem because they are targeting naive young people who see starvation as a quick way to lose weight,” says the psychologist and behavioural scientist, Dr Mary Hagan. Media images of thin models have been blamed, and data from Fiji does show that after the introduction of TV, eating disorders increased.