Nicole Richie has been the longtime poster child for the "Girl, have a sandwich!" brigade. Tabloids even claimed the celebutante wore a red "friends of Ana" bracelet in solidarity with anorexics. (She insisted to Vanity Fair it was a Jewish hamsa bracelet.) But despite her demonstrably poor life choices, like having Paris Hilton as a BFF, Richie was wise enough to realize she should put some meat on her bones. She told VF in 2006, "It upsets me. I know I’m too thin right now, so I wouldn’t want any young girl looking at me and saying, ‘That’s what I want to look like.’ I do know that they will, which is another reason I really do need to do something about it. I’m not happy with the way I look right now." Richie continued, "I had a bad breakup [a broken engagement with DJ AM], and it eats me up inside when I’m upset about something. I get really stressed out, and I lose my appetite, but I do force myself to eat. I tried to put the weight on my way, eating burritos, but that wasn’t working, so I started seeing a nutritionist and a doctor. I was scared that it could be something more serious, because it wasn’t making any sense to me; I really was trying. So I had thyroid tests and all that. I do recognize that I have a problem, and I want to be responsible and fix it, and I’m on that path right now." It would seem in recent years that she has gotten ahold of her health issues admirably. [Vanity Fair]
