One woman who fought anorexia for ten years and eventually beat it shared her story with Southwest Floridians last night. Johanna Kandell first battled the eating disorder as a sixth-grader when she was a ballet dancer. Over the years, she hid it from parents and others. Now, Kandel is executive director of the ‘Alliance for Eating Disorders Awareness’ ... an organization she founded.

“And it really wasn’t until I was about 21 years old. And one night I was looking in the mirror and I just...I didn’t know who I was anymore. I had to stop dancing because they basically said that if I continued to dance, it would kill me. And it was just a very, very, very hard moment in my life. But I knew that somewhere inside of me, deep down, I had the will to get better. And I wanted to get better.”

Kandel made the comments on W-G-C-U’s Gulf Coast Live. She was a featured speaker last night in Fort Myers at the second annual conference on ‘Eating Disorders’.