Demi Lovato Talks About Struggle With Eating Disorder

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

Demi Lovato opened up to Ellen DeGeneres about her struggle with an eating disorder. The singer also recalled her 2018 drug overdose and says she is happier and healthier today. During a candid interview for The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Lovato, 27, said her previous work team would control everything she ate. I lived a life for the past six years that I felt like wasn't my own. Because I struggled really hard with an eating disorder, yes, and that was my primary problem and then it turned into other things, but my life, I just felt was - I hate to use this word, but I felt like it was controlled by so many people around me,”she said.

The "I Love Me" singer added: “If I was in my hotel room at night, they would take the phone out of the hotel room so I couldn't call room service, or if there was fruit in my room they took it out because that's extra sugar. We're not talking about brownies and cookies and candies and stuff like that, it was fruit."

She also regretted that for the past years she couldn't enjoy cake on her birthday and instead ate watermelon cake with “fat-free whipped cream. Demi says that has all changed. “This year, when I turned 27 - I have a new team - Scooter Braun, my manager, gave me the best birthday cake and I spent it with Ariana Grande, who is one of my good friends, and we just had the best birthday. I just remember crying because I was finally eating cake with a manager that didn't need anything from me and that loved me for who I am and supported my journey.” The singer realized she needed more freedom. “I think at some point it becomes dangerous to try to control someone's food when they're in recovery from an eating disorder,” she said.

Demi also reflected on her sobriety relapse and 2018 drug overdose. “I have to preface it with the fact that I got sober at 19, so I got sober at an age where I wasn't even legally allowed to drink. I got the help that I needed at the time, and I took on the approach of a 'one size fits all' solution, which is sobriety,”she said. She “asked for help and I didn't receive the help that I needed… so I was stuck in this unhappy position and here I am sober and I'm thinking to myself, 'I'm six years sober but I'm miserable. I'm even more miserable than I was when I was drinking. Why am I sober? '"

Demi says she was disappointed by some people around her. “I sent a message out and I reached out to the people that were on my team and they responded with, like, 'You're being very selfish, this would ruin things for not just you but for us as well,'” she recalled. “When I heard that - my core issues are abandonment from my birth father as a child - when they left, they totally played on that fear and I felt completely abandoned, so I drank. That night, I went to a party and there was other stuff there, and it was only three months before I ended up into the hospital with an OD.”

Demi is grateful to be in a better place today. "Ultimately, I made the decisions that got me to where I am today, it was my actions that put me in the position that I'm in," she said. “I think it's important that I sit here on this stage and tell you at home, or you in the audience, or you right here that if you do go through this, you yourself can get through it, you can get to the other side … As long as you take the responsibility, you can move past it and learn to love yourself the way you deserve to be loved.”