Getting RealCharli D’Amelio, Demi Lovato and More Stars Who Have Openly Struggled With Eating Disorders

Jordan Fisher

The actor recalled receiving a surprising health update when his wife was “four months pregnant, five months pregnant,” during an appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show in April 2023.

“I was diagnosed with an eating disorder that I did not know I had. I just knew that I had reflux and all of these things that were making it difficult for me to eat,” Jordan shared. “My last couple months of [a work] contract were very, very difficult physical times for me. I lost 30 pounds [and] I actually never talked about this out loud on a platform like this at all, and man, I’m so glad I made it through that desert because here we are now.”

Lucy Hale

“I was eating so little that it was shocking. It all rooted back to, ‘I don’t feel enough.’ It slowly grew and grew until I could not enjoy life, I could not have a conversation, I could not focus on anything,” the actress shared on an episode of the “Diary of a CEO” podcast in February 2023.” It’s a miracle that I even started working … because it was a constant loop.”

Lucy went on to say how she’s since learned how important it is to “nourish” her body.

“It’s so sad to think that I hated myself so much that I couldn’t even give it basic needs like food. That is so tragic. Now I can look back and see photos and think, ‘Oh, my God, I wasn’t seeing reality.’ You just create this narrative in your head which is scary and dark and it ultimately wasn’t about the way I looked, it was about so much more, which is I had no self-worth – incredibly low self-worth,” she shared. “I always knew it wasn’t normal behavior, I knew my hair shouldn’t be falling out and I knew I shouldn’t be able to see every bone in my body but you get addicted to this feeling of controlling your own body.”

Camila Mendes

The actress opened up about her eating disorder struggles while appearing on Dear Media’s “Going Mental” podcast in January 2023, revealing that during the first season of Riverdale, she would “watch every episode and be like, ‘Oh my God, my stomach there.'”

Camila added, “I was so insecure, and it really fueled my eating disorder.”

Previously, in October 2018, she told Shape, “I’ve struggled with bulimia. It happened a little bit in high school and again when I was in college. Then it came back when I started working in this industry with fittings all the time and watching myself on camera. I had such an emotional relationship with food and anxiety about everything I put into my body. If I ate a sweet, I would be like, ‘Oh my God, I’m not going to eat for five hours now.’ I was always punishing myself. I was even anxious about healthy food. I was consumed with the details of what I was eating, and I always felt as if I was doing something wrong.”

Hilary Duff

“Because of my career path, I can’t help but be like, ‘I am on camera and actresses are skinny.’ It was horrifying,” she said during a December 2022 interview with Women’s Health Australia, explaining that she’s since overcome her past body struggles.

“[I’m] appreciating my health, doing activities that make me feel strong instead of just bettering the outside of my body,” the Disney alum continued. “Spending time with people that make me feel good and share similar views on health and body positivity and getting enough sleep and balance in my diet.”

Sophie Turner

“I have a love-hate relationship with social media. I wish I’d never got myself involved with it in the first place,” the actress told Elle in May 2022. “I look at the comments on Instagram and think, ‘Oh, f–k. Everyone thinks this about me.’ It would completely consume me.”

She added, “For a long time, I was quite sick with an eating disorder and I had a companion. I don’t know if you know what a companion is? It’s a live-in therapist, who would ensure I wasn’t doing anything unhealthy with my eating habits. One night, I was playing over and over in my mind a comment I’d seen on Instagram. I was like, ‘I’m so fat, I’m so undesirable,’ and spinning out. She said to me, ‘You know, no one actually cares. I know you think this, but nobody else is thinking it. You’re not that important.’ … That was the best thing anyone could have told me.”

Laurie Hernandez

“Honestly it was a really long up and down journey of understanding food and understanding how I saw food and how my body received food,” the Olympian told Us Weekly in June 2021. “There was a lot of learning and a lot of patience and grace involved. … It just got a little bit obsessive and unhealthy, and now I don’t count or track calories. I’m just kind of eating clean, because I also know that food is a fuel and for what I do and it is important to eat healthy.”

The gymnast added, “Every body is completely different and taking the time to really understand what makes you feel good and what makes you feel like you … I think that’s the most important part. So be patient with yourself and be okay with discovering what you like.”

Lana Condor

In a 2019 interview with Elle Canada, the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before actress shared her own personal experience with an eating disorder and body dysmorphia because she wants people to nourish their bodies and stop getting hung up on the idea of being a certain size. “I know what it’s like to have an eating disorder and body dysmorphia — and also what it’s like to be a friend to someone who has that,” she told the mag. “I think it’s time to give people comfort. You have to eat. You have to stop thinking that a certain body shape is ideal, because it’s not.”

She further touched on the topic during her February 2021 cover story with Self magazine. “When you see yourself in a mirror constantly, and you’re, like, wearing nothing, you can really just nitpick yourself to death, which is so unhealthy,” she said. “I’m not in a place where I can say, ‘Oh, yeah, it’s over.’ I have to work on it every single day … If someone were to come to me asking for advice about body dysmorphia and any sort of mental health, I would just say you have to treat yourself like your best friend.”

Halsey

The singer shared a photo of a time when they were struggling with an eating disorder via Instagram Stories. While taking part in the “post a picture of” trend, a fans asked that she share a picture of “you at your lowest point.” Halsey shared a since-deleted photo of themself with the caption, “TW: ED, ask for help.”

Hours later, she apologized to fans for sharing the picture without a “sufficient trigger warning.”

“I was very nervous to post it and didn’t think properly. I had positive intentions. I would never want to harm someone who shares my struggle,” the songstress wrote on Twitter in December 2020.

Madelyn Cline

The Outer Banks actress opened up about her past struggles during a December 2020 interview with Women’s Health. “I think I was around 16 when I started working out a lot. I would wake up every morning at 5 a.m. and I would work out for 30 minutes. It was super rigorous cardio every day,” she recalled, adding that when she didn’t see the results she wanted, she “started cutting calories.”

“I would eat like six almonds for breakfast because I didn’t want to counteract the cardio that I just did,” she explained. “It turned into not feeding myself protein and not feeding my body what it needed when I was working out so much … I worked out multiple times during the day. All I knew was I wasn’t achieving a particular body image, and so I was angry. I was harming myself and starving myself in the process of trying to achieve that.”

Finally, Madelyn started to recover, with the help of her mom.
“She would stand there in the mirror with me and we would list out things that I liked about my body,” the actress said. “After that repetition those things became solidified in my mind. I like my curves, I like my hips, and after a while I started to love my body. I became so much happier.”

Sadie Robertson

The reality star revealed that her eating disorder developed after competing on Dancing with the Stars.

“During Dancing with the Stars … I had this body that I never thought I’d have. I had a six-pack for two weeks, but then Thanksgiving hit and it went away. People started to comment,” she told Entertainment Tonight in September 2020. “There were people in my life who were just really negative influences, that would say things that were not uplifting about the way that I looked and how I needed to maintain the body that I had. It was so wrong. I was insecure at the time, so I believed them.”

She added, “People would say things like, ‘Oh, if you lost 10 more pounds, you would look like a real model.’ I was literally 115 pounds and already unhealthy. That just messed my mind up,” she said, before explaining how her faith helped her get through the eating disorder. “It definitely made me stop thinking about myself as much. It allowed me to be able to think of others, and how I can serve them with the body I’ve been given.”

Greyson Chance

The singer opened up about his battle with anorexia a lengthy Instagram post, ahead of the release of his new song, “I’m Done Being Bad To Myself” in August 2020.

“I can’t release ‘Bad To Myself’ without telling you that it’s about an eating disorder, and my ongoing battle with anorexia. Back in 2018, when I was writing Portraits, I was not in a good place. Not only was I recovering from a tough breakup, but I was also reentering back into music, and I felt nothing but chaos in my head. I was desperately searching for some kind of control. I found that control by watching the numbers drop on my scale as I starved myself day-in and day-out. It wasn’t until I woke up in a hospital bed one morning that I knew I had to turn things around not only for myself, but for my family, my friends and for all of you,” he wrote. “There is a certain taboo around eating disorders in our society, and I am sharing my story to hopefully make a small crack at that stigma. Eating disorders do not discriminate; they affect such a large population of people, non-dependent on gender, identity, age, or background.”

He continued, “Two years later, I feel stronger than I have ever been, but I would be lying if I said I still am not battling against anorexia, and I know that it will be a continued battle for the rest of my life. To anyone struggling with an eating disorder, know that I am here for you, I understand you, and I encourage you to stay strong in your fight. I’ve put a resource link in my bio that was extremely helpful to me during my time of need, and I hope it is helpful to anyone struggling too. I love you. You are enough and I am enough. I found an inner-strength through writing this song, and I make a sincere promise to you: I am done being ‘Bad To Myself.'”

Charli D’Amelio

“I’ve always tried to use my voice when it comes to issues surrounding body image, but I’ve never talked about my own struggles with eating disorders,” she wrote in a candid Instagram Stories post from September 2020. “It’s so uncomfortable to admit to even your closest friends and family, let alone the world. I’ve been afraid to share that I have an eating disorder, but ultimately I hope that by sharing this I can help someone else.”

The internet star added, “I know eating disorders are something that so many other people are also battling behind closed doors.”

In a separate Instagram video from February 2022, Charli added, “Some of the most hurtful comments I read about myself online are, ‘She’s fatter than when we got her famous,’ or, ‘She’s ugly.’ A lot about my body shape, my body type. … [It] hits close to home because I struggled a lot with body image, body dysmorphia, bad eating habits. No one really knows that… It hurts for everyone no matter who you are. Getting hundreds of thousands of hate comments per week is a lot to handle.”

Grayson Dolan

“I’ve struggled with eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia for the past for years of my life. I’ve gone through many ups and down with my disorders, but as of recently I’ve found a regimen that has helped me to combat them and has ultimately made my life much, much better,” the YouTuber shared on Twitter in July 2020.

Billie Eilish

Billie has spoken candidly about her struggle with body dysmorphia over the years. She told Rolling Stone in July 2019 that joining a dance company when she was 12 changed the way she perceived herself.

“That was probably when I was the most insecure. I wasn’t as confident. I couldn’t speak and just be normal. At dance, you wear really tiny clothes. And I’ve never felt comfortable in really tiny clothes. I was always worried about my appearance. That was the peak of my body dysmorphia. I couldn’t look in the mirror at all,” she explained.

The singer also told Vogue in February 2020, “I just hated my body. I would have done anything to be in a different one. I really wanted to be a model, really bad, and I was chubby and short. I developed really early. I had boobs at nine. I got my period at 11. So my body was going faster than my brain. It’s funny, because when you’re a little kid, you don’t think of your body at all. And all of a sudden, you look down and you’re, like, ‘Whoa. What can I do to make this go away?’”

Emma Chamberlain

The YouTuber graced the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine in January 2020, where she got real about her body dysmorphia.

“Living in L.A., if you’re at an unhealthy weight, that’s normal. That’s really, really, really a mindf–k, for sure,” she said. “Like, your grind is your grind, and I’m not going to get in the way of that. I just think that growing up on social media gave me eating issues as a kid. I literally have struggled with that my whole life. Almost every person I’ve met has had some form of an eating disorder. I mean, I’ve had… I don’t want to trigger anyone, but so many.”

The brunette beauty explained that spending hours editing her videos led to her not liking the way she looked. “I’ve been fully not at a healthy weight and I thought I was obese multiple times. It’s awful,” she continued. “My whole family was telling me I looked terrible. They were like, ‘You look like you’re dying.’ I was like, ‘I think I look great.’”

Sam Smith

Sam opened up about their body image issues in an Instagram post in January 2020. “Feels so good to have my top off on holiday. Spent all my life hiding my body from the sun,” they wrote. “The last year my skin has been soaking in that LIGHT. Don’t let anyone or anything stop you from feeling that kiss from above you beautiful humans.”

Previously, in February 2019, they got real about their insecurities. “In the past if I have ever done a photo shoot with so much as a T-shirt on, I have starved myself for weeks in advance and then picked and prodded at every picture and then normally taken the picture down,” the “Fire on Fire” singer captioned a shirtless photo. “Yesterday I decided to fight the f–k back. Reclaim my body and stop trying to change this chest and these hips and these curves that my mum and dad made and love so unconditionally.”

Jade Thirlwall

The Little Mix singer opened up about how she dealt with an eating disorder for five years before appearing on The X Factor in 2011.

“Anorexia was my own dark secret and I guess I was sort of satisfied with that,” the star said on BBC “Sounds Life Hacks” podcast in August 2019. “It was my own thing that I could do to myself and nobody knew about it. I obviously became very small and my ribs were sticking out. I was very gaunt and I used to wear a lot of baggy clothes to hide that.”

The star went on to explain how she reached a turning point, saying, “The doctors told me that I would die if I kept doing it. To hear somebody say that to you is actually quite scary and I started to realize how damaging it was for my family.”

Dove Cameron

“For years, I abused my body with eating disorders and going on as little as two or three hours of sleep,” she told Seventeen Magazine in July 2019. “About two years ago, I was completely burnt out. I’m incredibly sensitive and have learned that I have many, many triggers that I have to manage. But as long as you are your own mother, healer and best friend, you will always know what you need. Sometimes it just takes a while to become yourself.”

Jennette McCurdy

Jennette told HuffPost in March 2019, “My disordered eating started when I was 11. As a child actress working in Hollywood, I quickly learned that remaining physically small for my age meant I had a better chance of booking more roles. Unfortunately, I had a trusty and dedicated companion ready to help me with my burgeoning anorexia: my mom!”

Although the former Nickelodeon star doesn’t hold it against her late mother at all, she did admit that she was a big contributor to her disordered eating habits. She recalls always feeling like her mom was never happy with the way she looked, which likely had a lot to do with the fact that she was anorexic herself.

“She’d regularly compare my size to that of other girls. She’d portion out my meals for me. She’d help me count calories,” Jennette said. “Now I’ve been in recovery maintenance for two years. I’m no longer actively engaging in disordered eating. After spending a lot of time in therapy working on myself and confronting what I’ve experienced, I finally feel like I have the perspective required to write about what I’ve been through.”

Demi Lovato

Demi has been very open about their struggles with bulimia and body dysmorphic disorder.

After going to a treatment facility at 18 years old, the “Sorry Not Sorry” singer told People, “I’d be lying if I said there weren’t days where I just want to stay in bed all day because I’m ashamed of my body. It’s a struggle I’ll probably have to deal with for the rest of my life. But I have so much life to live; I don’t want to waste it.”

Zayn Malik

In a 2017 interview with The Sunday Times, the former One Direction crooner spoke about revealing his disorder, saying, “People saw strength in that, and they didn’t seem to expect it from a guy, but they expect it from a female, which to me is crazy. We’re all human. People are often afraid to admit difficulties, but I don’t believe that there should be a struggle with anything that’s the truth.”

Debby Ryan

“Dysmorphia has been a dark passenger of mine for years. I first noticed it at 13, when I was told to draw an image of my body, and the silhouette and shape of what I saw apparently did not line up at all with what everyone else saw,” Debby said to The Sydney Morning Herald in August 2018. “I don’t know to this day if I’ve ever looked in the mirror and seen what other people see when they look at me. And I have never had a day, not one day, where I looked in the mirror and thought, ‘Cool.’ It used to be all I wanted but I’ve accomplished a lot in 12 years, so maybe I don’t need that to feel fulfilled any more.”