Everyone has heard of it and many joke about it, but for one woman the freshman 15 was something to fear. She was so afraid of gaining 15 pounds that she almost starved herself to death. She became anorexic.When Julie Palmer entered Ohio State in Fall 1991, she was 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighed 125 pounds. By Memorial Day weekend her weight had plummeted 33 pounds to 92.Now 25 years old, Palmer reflects on the events of that time and her fight with anorexia.”I was so fearful of gaining the freshman 15 that I would only eat a bowl of raisins a day,” Palmer said. “If that wasn’t available then I would just eat a bowl of Raisin Bran or a bowl of fruit and that would be it for a 24-hour period.”Although many of her friends expressed concern at the amount of weight she had lost, Palmer continued with her potentially deadly eating habits.”My friends would comment that I had lost weight and I would say, ‘Oh yeah, about five pounds,’ knowing that I had lost much more than that,” Palmer said. “I just focused on the scale and what it said. When it said 105 pounds, I wanted to be 100 pounds and then I wondered if I could get under 100 pounds. I was just obsessed. I thought all of my friends were thinner than me. But they weren’t – that is just what was going on in my mind.” When Memorial Day weekend arrived, Palmer’s parents were alarmed at their daughter’s appearance.”My mom was like ‘Are you eating?’ and I said ‘Oh sure’ while my friend was standing behind me shaking her head ‘No’ to my mom,” Palmer said.When they returned home she still refused to eat. Her parents gave her an ultimatum: Put back on half of the weight lost or no return to Columbus.”But I was thinking it only took me eight weeks to lose the weight, so fine, I’ll put it back on and then I’ll just lose it all again,” Palmer said. After getting her weight back up to 108 pounds, Palmer was allowed to return to school. There, while participating in aerobics, she developed a new interest: fitness competitions.”When I first told my mother about it she thought it was a phase I was going through,” Palmer said. Palmer trained excessively, ate sporadically and finished last in her first fitness competition, the Mike Francois World Gym Fitness Classic in 1997. But she did not give up. She enlisted the help of personal trainer Mike Davies and redoubled her efforts.”Mike taught me to eat the right way and to eat the right foods,” she said. “He explained to me that if I didn’t eat I wouldn’t develop the muscle that I needed and would never get as lean as I need to be.” Palmer said that she was used to performing aerobics and cardiovascular exercises incessantly to achieve what she thought would be the perfect body. It was difficult for her to cut back on the amount of work that she was doing at the time.”I’m a perfectionist and that’s what my problem was. I was starving myself to get the perfect body,” she said.However, after two years of hard work and eating correctly, her efforts reaped dividends. This year, Palmer won the tall class at the Mike Francois World Gym Classic, the same contest in which she finished dead last two years earlier. She also won the Ms. Fitness Ohio title, The Great Lakes Fitness Guide and The Powerhouse Classic.Palmer now eats eight to 10 times a day while training hard at World Gym North.”It’s funny because I’ll be at work and everyone knows that at 6 p.m. it’s time for me to eat. And if I don’t get my meal I’m going to be extremely cranky,” she laughed.Today Palmer weighs 118 pounds and sports a body fat percentage of 8 percent during contest time. During the off-season she weighs 128 pounds and keeps her body fat around 13 percent.While being a fitness competitor has given Palmer self-esteem and a body that she can be proud of, there is something more important to her.”Last year was the first time in six years that I sat down and ate a Thanksgiving meal with my family,” she said. “In fact, I asked my mom to make two turkeys so that I could take one home with me. She did it and I brought it home.”Palmer will continue to compete this year. She entered the North American Bodybuiling and Fitness show in Detroit last month and is planning to enter the National Physique Committee’s Nationals in October.