"Losing 60 Kilos Ruined My Life"

Slimming down seemed to be the answer to all her problems. But as she soon realised, losing 60 kilos didn't bring happiness.

"I knew that there were future versions of me that were bigger and bigger," Annie told the New York Post. "I was 20 years old and I didn't want to turn 21 having never felt good about myself."

In her memoir, It Was Me All Along, Mitchell compares herself to overweight people she saw on television. “The half-ton man; the woman who never left her house again; the panel of obese teens on talk shows; the mother who was forklifted from her home… Is this what I've become? Or at the very least, am I on my way?"

Her memoir further reveals how she suffered endless cravings, guilt and a fear that she would regain the weight she lost.

"I felt that deep longing for sweets," she writes. "Come 8 or 9 p.m., my stomach felt hollow. I wanted cake. I wanted chocolate. I couldn't watch television without looking at my lap, where I wished there could be a bowl of crunchy something."

At 61 kilos, things went from bad to worse as Mitchell began to isolate herself, becoming consumed by a negative relationship with food. "You pin your hopes and your dreams on 'When I'm thin, I will… fill in the blank,” she told the New York Post. “You think everything will be better once you lose the weight. And it wasn't."

Despite losing almost half her body weight, Annie was the unhappiest she had ever been and was diagnosed with an eating disorder. It took regular therapy sessions to rebuild her relationship with food and now, at a healthy 68 kilos, she tells tell the New York Post she doesn't fear food anymore.

"It's taken me 10 years to find a weight where I feel like, 'I'm good here. It's the weight where you don't have to struggle. It's when you don't have to turn down an Oreo."

Want more celebrity, entertainment and lifestyle news? Follow Be on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram