Geri can overcome her eating illness

A year ago, I stood in a Los Angeles studio with Geri Halliwell, who had stripped down to a G-string. I was then the editor of Marie Claire, and we were shooting the magazine's cover.

I have seen some very skinny celebrities and models in my time (and although these women look great in clothes, they can be disturbingly skeletal when naked), but Geri had the body of a pre-adolescent child.

We had been expecting the healthy New-Geri, Yoga-Geri, but everyone at the shoot - the stylist, photographer, hairdresser - was shocked at the flesh-and-blood reality. We huddled together to figure out how to shoot her and not show too many jutting bones. I knew something was up when the magazine received a fax stipulating that on no account should any fattening food be made available at the shoot, only plain rice and steamed vegetables.

When I offered to fetch Geri a coffee, she specified that it be made with skimmed milk only, and no sugar. I remember leaving the shoot feeling incredibly depressed that a young, beautiful and successful woman was not comfortable in her own body, unable to escape the tyranny of food.

The news at the weekend that Geri had checked herself into a clinic in Arizona after returning to her old cycle of bingeing and vomiting, that in fact she relapses every few months, came as no surprise. Eating disorders, of all psychiatric illnesses, are the most difficult to recover from. In fact, anorexia and bulimia are rarely cured, you merely learn to live with them. I was anorexic from the age of 11 and the most common question I am asked is: when and how did you recover from it? The answer is, I've still got it - I have just learned to control it.

It is not Geri Halliwell's fault that she has "fallen off the wagon", she simply hasn't reached that point in her life where she can stay on an even keel. Being a much-photographed celebrity is the worst possible occupation for a woman concerned with her body image. Inevitably, she'll be portrayed as weak and a bad influence on young women and told to pull herself together. It isn't as easy as that.

The difference between eating disorders and, say, alcoholism or smoking is that you simply cannot survive without food, although anorexics become very good at avoiding it as much as possible. Aged 11, I became vegan to avoid the family Sunday roast and school lunches. When I left home, it became even easier to eat very little; for years I survived on four apples a day and a raspberry yoghurt (fewer calories than the hazelnut variety).

Even though I sought help when I became dangerously thin and attended a weekly clinic at Bart's to be weighed, I would eat furiously the day before and conceal squash bottles in my coat to add pounds. Then I would starve myself with a vengeance.

I can understand Geri's abhorrence at the thought of a few muffins on the shoot; if a colleague popped out to get me a sandwich and it had butter or margarine on it, I could not eat it. Control is everything; as a star, Geri has very few people around her who will say no. As well as therapy, which she has sought, women with eating disorders (and women are by far the most common sufferers) need strong people around them to spot the warning signs. An eating disorder is always a weak spot; whenever I am feeling low I stop eating, automatically. We cannot avoid bad things happening to us in life, but we have to learn to deal with them in a different way.

I have been a normal weight for about 10 years now - I'm 5ft 8in and around nine stone, up from a low of around six stone - but still don't have a normal attitude to food. I eat butter, an egg, a croissant, but I feel guilty doing so, and don't enjoy the experience. I won't eat chocolate. I get anxious if I am invited to dinner at a friend's house (will they use too much oil, will I have to eat cream?). I prefer to meet friends for dinner in a restaurant, so that I can pick and choose and avoid "bad" food. I eat more normally now that I live with my boyfriend. He ensures we always have dinner together and that I have something for breakfast. But he also knows he can never joke about or criticise my body. If he goes out for the evening I will still think, great, I can skip dinner.

Anorexics are easier to spot than bulimics, who can maintain a reasonable body weight. But women with eating disorders excel at hiding what they do. I have a friend who has been bulimic since the age of 15; she is now 25.

She is very close to her mother, but even she did not notice the rash around her daughter's mouth due to the constant vomiting. She has therapy once a week, and now recognises her danger signs. But the temptation to vomit after a particularly big meal is always there. Another friend is a TV presenter - she is beautiful, earns a great deal of money, has a supportive boyfriend - but is well aware that she could again slip into the eating habits she had as a teenager. She was bulimic and exercised obsessively. She deliberately won't let herself go below a size 12 and refuses to join a gym. The thought in the back of your mind that you might slip, as Geri has just done, never goes away.

Although the headlines about Geri might glamorise the issue, this is an illness that doesn't need celebrity endorsement to remain widespread.

But women do look up to Geri more than any other celebrity. In a survey of 10,000 young women conducted last year, she had the body most wanted to have.

"A friend at work has just announced she is going to halve her fat intake and eat like Geri - steamed rice and fish," wrote a 23-year-old from Bristol. "Just when I seem to be feeling OK, up pops another spindly celebrity, and I compare my soft, fat, pale and dimply body to theirs."

Another wrote: "I have a friend who wants to look like Geri and is eating only a Cup-a-Soup Extra every day," said a 29-year-old former model from Leicestershire. "I want her will-power!" Geri Halliwell is under pressure from the public to have a tiny body, but also to recover quickly and not inspire another swathe of young girls to mimic her disorder.

By the time a young woman sees food as the enemy, it is almost too late. The only real solution is to nip the problem in the bud: parents must learn to recognise the warning signs (food fads, obsessive exercising, frequent bathroom visits, bad breath, spots) early on, and to offer reassurance. One of the women I interviewed for a Channel 4 documentary on body image last year, who dieted obsessively and even wore a long-sleeve wedding dress to hide her arms, said the only way she could stop her daughters from suffering in the same way was to tell them, every day, that they are beautiful, that they should look up to women who have achieved something in life other than to be a size 0.

Another woman I interviewed was a brilliant cartoonist, who aged 40 was still fighting anorexia. She was below four stone, had been in and out of hospitals for most of her life, had endless therapy and support from her family. She died just before Christmas. For some of us, no amount of help is enough.

? The Eating Disorders Association helpline is on 01603 621414.