My Friends Are Now Weight-Obsessed..Great.

     Long story short: My friend and I decided to join a gym. More people started coming. Now they're all obsessed with their weight, half the people just signed up for the gym to just look good, barely go and are starving themselves, or are convinced their ugly. 
  Honestly, none of my friends are unhealthily overweight. We were all pretty healthy really. But now my friends are trying to do all these crazy things. My one friend is as skinny as a freaking stick, but because she is tall and has a wider body structure, she is now only trying to eat 500 calories a day while burning off an average of 300+ every time she goes to the gym. My other friend is now trying to lose 16 pounds in four days.
  I want to make something clear. It wasn't the gym that caused the problem. My friends and I signed up with the right intentions, to be healthy. But now they are convinced that the only way to be healthy is by looking anorexic. This is really scaring the sh*t out of me. One of my friends might walk into school deciding the best option is to throw things up one day.
  There's a big difference between being a pole and being healthy. Weight loss is not = to a strong heart. Some people who are slightly overweight are a lot healthier than people who look like a car ran over them and turned them into a pancake.
<--- Don't want my best friends to look like this. Eek. 
  Even though I know all the facts, and I know that I'm well within my healthy weight range, I'm scared my friends could sort of rub off on me. All they keep saying is how skinny and lucky I am, but it's making me self conscious. Now I look in a mirror every time I walk by one. And the scarier thing, the friend who keeps telling me this is actually skinner than me. 
    Out of all the people who would develop weight problems, I would never guess it would be my friends. My friends were always the anti-make up, anti- sexist abercrombie shirt people. Even some of my guy friends are starting to have weight problems. I always thought people were exaggerating when they were saying the media is driving eight year old girls to bulimia, but it's real.
   I have met people who actually do have anorexia as an actual disease. Even though they are extremely skinny, they look in the mirror and see a blimp. No person should have to go through this. If you are going through this, keep on fighting the disease. It is beat-able, but it should never be any person's goal. 
   I don't really know what I can do to help. All I can say, is that if you are a parent reading this, please educate your kids about health, and give them the right facts (and from having some yo-yo dieters in my family make sure you do know the right facts) and teach them anorexia is not = to a healthy body. If you're a teen reading this, make sure you educate yourself about the right facts. Even when you know the right facts, it can be hard. But I guess all you can do is remind yourself that if you want to live longer, you have to be healthy. Along with the fact that if I want to live longer, I'll just have to accept the fact I'm pale. No more self-tanner chemical filled bottles. 
 - Anneliese