Kate Winslet's teenage obsession with dieting

Earlier this month, Kate Winslet's lawyers began looking into the process of suing a British tabloid for claiming Kate had seen a diet doctor. At the time, Kate said, "I'm going to fight for myself. I don't want people thinking that I would ever go to a diet doctor, I would ever buy into that stuff. I never have done, I never will." While Winslet may not buy into the concept of a diet doctor, she did recently admit to going overboard dieting while in her teens.

According to London's Daily Mail, Kate's schoolmates called her Blubber when she was 16. The paper quotes Winslet as saying, "When I was 15, I was nearly 14 stone [196 pounds]. I was uncomfortable and self-conscious. I knew I wanted to be an actress and was big. Over a year I sensibly got down to 10 stone [140 pounds]. Then I became addicted to losing weight and went too far. I was never anorexic or bulimic. I went through a three-month experimental laxative time which was absolutely awful."

Winslet claims she got over her dieting obsession without things getting too bad. She says, "Luckily I was strong enough to be able to say to myself: 'What are you doing? You are just really hungry.'" Now Kate is estimated to be about a size 8 and confesses, "The whole weight thing drives me crazy. This stuff is so important to me because I have been there and know what a vicious cycle it is."

But even though Winslet has what many women would consider to be a enviable figure, she admits to her own flaws regularly. She told Movieline's Hollywood Life magazine, "I am very, very normal. I am actually proud of all the marks and scars that I bear."