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COPYRIGHT 2006 Waterloo Courier
Byline: Kelsey Holm
Jul. 30--WATERLOO -- As a teenager, Craig Laue wanted what many other teen wants -- acceptance from his peers, a spot on the baseball team and a way to shed the extra pounds that caused others to tease him.
These pressures, normal in the world of teenagers, were the catalyst for an eating disorder that has plagued Laue, now 29, for much of his life. At first, eating was a means of comfort for Laue. Then, the summer before his junior year of high school, he decided to change his ways. He had a superstar athlete for an older brother, and wanted to be like him. He started exercising and eating less, going from 220 pounds at age 16 to a healthy 170 pounds at 17. But what seemed like a positive change was just the peak of a slippery slope. "The picking on me didn't stop. I thought, 'I have to keep working out so the fat jokes don't start again,'" he said. "There was more and more of watching my weight and exercising. It spiraled out of control. ... I weighed 112 pounds and I was 5 feet 11 inches tall. ... I had no energy, I was pale. My body started eating muscle instead of fat. But I would look in the mirror and still see this chunky kid." After years of vacillating between healthy and dangerously underweight, Laue didn't truly start to recover until February 2005, when he sought the help of a therapist. It took a long time for him to come to terms with his disease, in part because he was male. The world still thinks of eating disorders as something only women suffer from. In March of this year, Laue started speaking to groups of high school students, telling them his story. It's a pre-emptive strike to stop eating disorders in a generation he knows is even...
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