22 Celebs Who Have Opened Up About Their Experiences With Eating Disorders

The presenter, cook - and mum of fellow presenter, Miquita - took to Instagram to speak openly about her disordered eating - and reinforce the message that recovery is often far from a linear process.

'As anyone with an eating disorder will tell you recovery is a fragile thing. I have to be very careful with myself and my emotional honesty or I’ll slide straight back down the slippery slope and end up where I started,' she shares, next to a picture of her posing in a glorious green dress in the Southbank Centre loos.

'As someone who has been at every end of the eating disorder scale, I spent years feeling never quite good enough at one end of the scale and actually existing in a dark swirl of deep depression at the other end.'

'There are whole swathes of my life where I actively avoided a mirror or a camera managing to skulk around the edges of family gatherings and any other snapabble moments!'

'Well NOT ANY MORE. I’m walking up to 59 soon this year and I’m learning to love all of me and that includes taking pictures freely joyfully and not panicking about all the imperfections I think I perceive.'

Go Andi!

Star of Little Fires Everywhere and Scandal, Kerry Washtington, opened up to Essence about the eating disorder she struggled with while studying dance.

‘I’d eat anything and everything…sometimes until I passed out,’ she told the magazine. ‘But then, because I had this personality that was driven toward perfectionism, I would tell people I was at the library, but instead go to the gym and exercise for hours and hours and hours. Keeping my behaviour a secret was painful and isolating. There was a lot of guilt and a lot of shame.'

Recovery, for Kerry, was prompted by her dance teacher asking if something was wrong. ‘I started therapy, which I still do today…Learning how to love myself and my body is a lifelong process. But I definitely don’t struggle the way I used to.'

'Therapy helped me realise that maybe it’s okay for me to communicate my feelings. Instead of literally stuffing them down with food, maybe it’s okay for me to express myself.’

In an appearance on podcast How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, Fearne Cotton opened up about her experiences with bulimia and shared that she had a 'disordered relationship with [her] body and food for 10 years.’

Bulimia became a form of release – a 'bad habit [she’d] kick into if something emotional was happening.'

'I never binged and puked up. I ate regular meals but then got rid of it all and it felt like a release,’ she said.

Becoming a parent is what ended the cycle for her. ‘Getting pregnant, I let go of all of it. I ate everything in sight. It just went overnight,' she revealed.

‘It came back, the feelings of loathing about my body after the birth, but I didn’t go back to the illness. I knew I had to stick to a very practical way of looking at food to sustain my health for myself and my newborn baby.'

After starring as a character suffering from anorexia in the movie To the Bone, the Emily in Paris actress spoke candidly about her own eating disorder at the Sundance Film Festival, where she was promoting the film.

'This movie was really important to me to be a part of because, as a teenager, I suffered from eating disorders,' she said.

'This is the first time I’m talking about it. This is my moment of talking about it. It’s important. It’s really important. It’s something that a lot of young women go through and there’s no shame in it, and this movie is about that — it’s about embracing your past and about realising it’s something that doesn’t define who you are, but it’s about your experiences, surrounding yourself with people that support you, and about surviving and getting through it.'

Recently, feminist, activist and actor Jameela Jamil opened up to her 3.5m Instagram followers about her experiences with anorexia.

'I rarely really smiled during this time, not just because I was so consumed with anorexia that I thought my face looked too round when I f**king smiled. But because I was too weak, all the time. Grumpy. No sex drive. No ambition. No motivation. My body is just not supposed to be this thin,' she wrote in a post caption.

'I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was being obedient. I thought it would me happy. They were the saddest, hungriest years of my life,' she continued.

'Please don’t be like me. Don’t waste your life. Don’t waste your precious time and your joy. Run towards recovery.'

'When I was in the Spice Girls, the stress of suddenly being thrust into the limelight led me into an unhealthy relationship with food and exercise,' Melanie told The Mirror in a 2012 interview.

'I became obsessed about what I ate and I cut lots of food groups, like carbs and protein, out of my diet. I survived on fruit and vegetables and little else.'

The Little Mix star spoke about her experience of anorexia on a BBC podcast in 2019.

'It was my own thing that I could do to myself and nobody knew about it,' she said. '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.'

'It got to the point when I knew I needed someone else to tell, harbouring a horrible secret like that is obviously really damaging to your mental health and obviously my physical health.'

'I used to throw up all the time in high school,' said Gaga of her struggles with bulimia, at a 2012 event.

'I wanted to be a skinny little ballerina but I was a voluptuous little Italian girl whose dad had meatballs on the table every night. I used to come home and say, "Dad, why do you always give us this food? I need to be thin." And he’d say, "Eat your spaghetti." It’s really hard, but … you’ve got to talk to somebody about it.'

'It made my voice bad, so I had to stop,' she said. 'The acid on your vocal cords – it’s very bad. But for those of you who don’t sing, you maybe don’t have that excuse until it’s too late. It’s very dangerous.'

In 2016 One Direction's Zayn Malik revealed that he suffered an eating disorder whilst in the band.

'Something I’ve never talked about in public before, but which I have come to terms with since leaving the band, is that I was suffering from an eating disorder,' he wrote in his eponymous autobiography.

'It got quite serious, although at the time I didn’t recognise it for what it was. When I look back at images of myself – before the final tour – I can see how ill I was,' he continued.

'The workload and the pace of life on the road put together with the pressures and strains of everything going on within the band had badly affected my eating habits. Food was something I could control, so I did.'

In her 2020 documentary Miss Americana, Swift shared that she had experienced anorexia as a result of constant negative commentary about her body.

'It’s not good for me to see pictures of myself every day,' she says. 'It’s only happened a few times, and I’m not in any way proud of it [but there have been times when I see] a picture of me where I feel like I looked like my tummy was too big, or someone said that I looked pregnant and that’ll just trigger me to just starve a little bit — just stop eating.'

'I thought I was just supposed to feel like I was gonna pass out at the end of a show or in the middle of it,' said Taylor. 'Now I realise, no, if you eat food, have energy, get stronger, you can do all these shows and not feel it, which is a really good revelation because I’m a lot happier with who I am I don’t care as much if somebody points out that I have gained weight.'

In a 2015 interview with Complex, Kravitz revealed she struggled with anorexia and bulimia – both started during her school years.

'I had a really hard time when I was 16, 17, 18,' she says. 'I started with the eating disorder in high school. I just [had a hard time] loving myself. I think it was part of being a woman, and being surrounded by [fame],' she said. 'I think it was definitely about being around that world, seeing that world. I felt pressured.'

In 2013, Kravitz starred as a character suffering anorexia in The Road Within, and that's when her eating disorder peaked. 'It was fucked up, man. You could see my rib cage. I was just trying to lose more weight for the film but I couldn’t see: You’re there. Stop. It was scary.' One New Year's Eve 2013, something shifted. 'I just felt it was different,' she said. 'I don’t know… if a f—king spirit came over me and said: "You have to stop".'

At the 2019 Goop health summit, Alba revealed that her eating disorder was a result of trying to avoid the advances of men.

'I was meant to feel ashamed if I tempted men,' she said. 'Then I stopped eating a lot when I became an actress. I made myself look more like a boy so I wouldn’t get as much attention.'

'When I was 17, I weighed, like, 98 pounds. I was totally obsessed with everything I put in my mouth. I was way too skinny,' Duff said in a 2015 interview with Health.

'Not cute. And my body wasn’t that healthy – my hands would cramp up a lot because I wasn’t getting the nutrition I needed.'

Lovato revealed in 2017 YouTube documentary Simply Complicated that their eating disorder began with binge eating at 8 years old.

'When I was in a relationship with Wilmer I went three years without purging and when we broke up that’s one of the first things I did,' they said in the documentary.

'The less I have to think about food, the easier it is to go about having a normal life and I don’t want to let anybody down so when I do have moments when I slip up, I feel very ashamed.'

Holliday opened up about her battle with anorexia on Twitter in May 2021, saying: 'I’m anorexic & in recovery. I’m not ashamed to say it out loud anymore. I’m the result of a culture that celebrates thinness & equates that to worth, but I get to write my own narrative now. I’m finally able to care for a body that I’ve punished my entire life & I am finally free.'

Later, in an Instagram post, she addressed those commenting on her weight loss, and urged them to do better. 'To everyone that keeps saying “you’re looking healthy lately” or “You are losing weight, keep it up!” Stop.Don’t. Comment. On. My. Weight. Or. Perceived. Health. Keep. It. To. Yourself. Thanks✌🏻.'

'Yes, I’ve lost weight — I’m healing from an eating disorder & feeding my body regularly for the first time in my entire life. When you equate weight loss with “health” & place value & worth on someone’s size, you are basically saying that we are more valuable now because we are smaller & perpetuating diet culture… & that’s corny as hell. NOT here for it.'

The Olympic gold medallist revealed in a 2021 interview with The Guardian that pressure from the sports industry had led to body image issues and disordered eating habits.

'I used to make myself throw up, in 2012,' he said. 'I weigh myself every day. I’ve had a very strange relationship with food and my body image. I guess it is a mild form of [an eating disorder].'

'Men always seem to not have eating disorders, and it’s hard to talk about it. But I would consider myself to be someone that has very much struggled with body image, and eating, and feeling guilty and shameful of the things that I eat.'

Lily Allen spoke out about her experience of bulimia in the 2010 documentary Riches to Rags.

'I used to vomit after meals. It's not something I'm proud of,' she says. 'A lot of people came up to me telling me how great I looked and I'd be on the cover of every magazine.'

'I thought I looked good...but I wasn't happy. I really wasn't.'

In a 2016 episode of Oprah: Where Are They Now? the Spice Girl shared that she'd had bulimia throughout her 20s.

'You know, I think one of the challenging aspects is the scrutiny being in the glare of the spotlight,' she said. 'I think I felt much more conscious of myself, my body weight. All the things that everybody goes normally goes through, but a heightened version.

'We all used different tools to get by, coping mechanisms. For me [it] was controlling my body weight and/or abusing food.

'Even when I’d recovered from it, I had a distant relationship with food. I wanted to be a healthy example for my daughter, so I tried to have balance.'

Osbourne spoke openly about having bulimia in the early noughties, and then, in a 2009 interview with The Daily Mail, shared that – whilst she didn't think she'd recover fully, she was taking steps to try to manage her eating disorder.

'I was getting really ill with all the up-chucking, and the acid reflux,' she said. 'I'd get into bed at night, curled up in a ball in pain. I was worried about what I was doing to my oesophagus.'

In a 2007 interview with CosmoGIRL Clarkson spoke about a six-month bout of bulimia she experienced as a young teen.

Later, she responded to the constant media commentary on her weight by saying, in an interview with Redbook: 'If I'm skinny one day or bigger one day, that ain't gonna change how I sound. I still sound pretty dang good. And my talent is why I'm here.'