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Demi Lovato has opened up about her recovery from eating disorders, which she has battled throughout her life.
The 34-year-old star shot to fame as a child actor on the Disney Channel, starring in the TV series Sonny with a Chance and the Camp Rock films.
Over the years, she has been open about her issues with body image and eating, and while she has undergone treatment, she doesn’t think she is “fully healed.”
Speaking to Kerry Washington on the Street You Grew Up On podcast, Lovato said: “I’m not in a place where I look at myself as fully healed.
“I don’t think that that’s something that I even think about striving towards because it doesn’t seem realistic.
“I think that food is going to be a battle for the rest of my life, but it’s a manageable battle.
“Some days I don’t love my body, but there are days where I accept it. I would say I live in a place of acceptance now where I don’t look in the mirror and berate myself for having, you know, curves.”
Demi revealed that her It’s Not That Deep Tour was part of her “healing” process, as she was “terrified” about what people would say about her appearance.
She recalled: “I had put on a little weight before the tour, and I was stressed, and I was like, I don’t want to go on stage.
“Like, I’m terrified people … they’re going to say things. They’re gonna write online. I went on stage anyways.
“No one turned around. No one got up out of their seats and said, ‘She’s not a size zero.’ You know, they still loved me and cried tears of joy when I sang for them.”
The “Fast” hitmaker traced her issues with food back to around age eight, when her little sister, Madison De La Garza, was born.
She explained: “I don’t say that to like put blame on anyone, but it was just that the attention was no longer on just me as the baby.
“I coped by binge eating and overeating.”
Demi, whose mother Dianna De La Garza also dealt with an eating disorder, found herself baking “a pan full of cookies,” and eating them in one sitting.
By the time she was a teenager, she started to understand what her mother was “dealing with.”
She added: “I emulated some of what I saw, and that’s when I developed anorexia. And from there it turned into bulimia, and it wasn’t until I was 18 that I sought treatment for it.”
Her recent tour was a “huge lesson” in what really matters, and she has realised she is “beautiful as she is.”
She said: “My worth isn’t in my body. My husband doesn’t love me because of my body. My family doesn’t love me because of my body.”
Demi also pointed out that the most important thing is that she’s “a good human.”
She added: “That’s what I hold true to my heart. So, I’ve learned a lot, and I’m really proud of how far I’ve come in that and my journey with my eating disorder recovery.”
