Latest news with #eatingdisorder
The Guardian
a day ago
- Health
- The Guardian
I had no idea where to find help for my eating disorder. Then Australia's new e-clinic changed everything
In 2020, I decided to get help for an eating disorder. Up until that point, I'd had some variation of one for years. It all started when I decided to go on my first diet, aged 21. What followed was a half decade of cycling through maddening patterns of restriction. From bingeing to purging, starving to hardcore exercising, my mind was constantly overrun by thoughts of food. How much I was eating, how much I wasn't eating, how great of a person I was for resisting food, how much of a loser I was for not being able to control myself. My self-esteem went down the toilet, along with my ability to feel joy. By the time I was ready to seek treatment, none was available. Despite having the time and financial means to see a therapist, I couldn't get into one. Waitlists were months long. Inpatient treatment wasn't an option either – by that stage, my eating disorder wasn't considered 'severe' enough to warrant a stay. And even if it had been, I had rent to pay and a career to build. Pressing pause on all that wasn't feasible. That's when a psychologist – who didn't have space for me herself – reached out. She sent me a link to a study being run by the University of Sydney and the InsideOut Institute. They were testing an online therapy program for bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder. She said I'd be a good candidate. I had no idea what to expect. And whatever expectations I had were low. I wasn't convinced that an online program could make a dent in what I felt was, at that stage, a personality flaw. But I had nothing to lose. So I signed up. It was a 12-week program. Every day, I logged my meals, my thoughts and any compensatory behaviours. While that might sound like a lot, I was already constantly thinking about food and my body. Now, I was just putting it down somewhere other than my brain. At first, tracking seemed counterintuitive. Counting meals was something I did when I was deep in restriction mode. But the point was separation. I wasn't the food I did or didn't eat. My behaviour was just that: behaviour. Something that could be unlearned. Meanwhile, I had weekly check-ins with a counsellor. She was kind of like the site manager for my emotional excavation. I was slowly dismantling the scaffolding I'd built around myself, and she helped me name each bit as it fell away. The program changed my life. It kickstarted my recovery and set me on the path back to my child self – the girl who didn't obsess over what she ate. The girl who thought of food as just that. Food. Something to enjoy, to share with friends, to enrich life – not interrupt it. Last week the federal government announced it is rolling this program out to the general public. After 10 years of research, the InsideOut eClinic is now available to Australians aged 16 and over who are struggling with food or body image concerns. It's a free, online clinic that anyone can access at any time. You don't need a diagnosis. You don't need a referral. You can just go to the website and have a poke around. The eClinic includes tailored programs like BEeT (for binge eating and bulimia), SkillED (for broader symptoms) and SupportED (for carers). There's a health professional hub for clinicians. When I was unwell, I had absolutely no idea where to start looking for help. This eClinic is a much-needed safety net. You can complete the programs at your own pace, from wherever you are. It's not suitable for people in a medical emergency or psychological crisis – they'll still need face-to-face care – but for many people, this will be a lifeline. Research has already shown how effective online therapy through the eClinic can be. And it's a gamechanger for people who live regionally or can't afford private treatment. Eating disorder research in this country is sorely lacking and deeply underfunded. It's a dire reality, considering eating disorders have one of the highest mortality rates of any mental illness in Australia. More than a million Australians are now living with one. In 2023 alone, more than 1,200 people died from an eating disorder, according to the Butterfly Foundation. Hundreds of thousands are still stuck in silence, still waiting, still falling through the cracks. The fact that the government has seen the merit in this treatment is significant. It's time we moved the dial. Lucinda Price is an author and comedian known online as Froomes. She is an InsideOut Institute eClinic ambassador In Australia, the Butterfly Foundation is at 1800 33 4673. In the UK, Beat can be contacted on 0808-801-0677. In the US, help is available at or by calling ANAD's eating disorders hotline at 800-375-7767. Other international helplines can be found at Eating Disorder Hope
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Candace Cameron Bure says she's still a bulimic as she opens up about eating disorder that began when she was 18
Candace Cameron Bure has revealed that she's still battling eating disorder that started when she was a teenager. The 49-year-old actress admitted she still considers herself to be bulimic during the most recent episode of her eponymous podcast. The episode, called, Why Can't I Feel Free in My Body?, explored body image and insecurities, with Candace talking about how being on TV at a young age affected her confidence. Talking to her guest, author Lisa Whittle, Candace said: 'The thoughts never leave me.' 'I, too, developed an eating disorder, when I was 18,' Candace said after Lisa talked about anorexia. 'It was binging and purging. I'm a bulimic. And I still say I'm a bulimic.' She explained that while she was not actively purging, she was still battling the disorder 'because the thoughts - whether I'm doing that or not - they never leave me.' Candace added: 'So I still need the tools to just say, "No, Candace, we're not doing that".' Candace spoke about how her parents' efforts to prevent her from developing bad eating habits while growing up in the spotlight backfired. She rose to fame at just 11-years-old while starring as DJ Tanner on the late 80s sitcom Full House. They 'did the best job in protecting me,' the former child star said of her mother and father, adding that they 'were really afraid' of her weight potentially being criticized by producers. She went on: 'I had cheeks and I had thicker arms and I was, like, a normal 12-year-old, you know? I really was a normal 12-year-old, but I had a little bit more fat on me than other kids on TV. They were just fearful that I would develop an eating disorder, just because of all of the pressures.' Candace said her family shifted to a health-centered lifestyle, encouraging her: 'Let's make sure we make good choices with food.' She went on: 'Everyone in my house was always on a diet. My mom was always on a diet. My sisters were always on a diet. I was always put on a diet. But it wasn't like, "Oh, you have to lose weight".' Although the attention to health and exercise was 'preventative,' it 'completely shaped my viewpoint that I had about myself and the feelings about my body', she said, adding: 'I'm on TV... and I don't want to be too fat compared to other actors. 'My parents never wanted a producer to come up to me and say, like, "We need your child to lose weight," so let's do everything preventative.' Career: Candace rose to fame at just 11-years-old while starring as DJ Tanner on the 90s sitcom Full House Consequences: Candace said her parents' efforts to prevent her from developing disordered eating habits while growing up in the spotlight backfired (pictured with Bob Saget in 1987) Looking back, Candace said: 'That very thing just shaped the way I looked at my body, which was like, "Oh, it's not good enough the way it is right now". 'That that kind of started young,' she said, adding that it continued 'through my teenage years.' Now, she says she feels like a 'broken record'. 'I'm 49-years-old and I'm like, why do I think about this so much? Why does it even matter so much? It's so ridiculous. And yet I'm still thinking about it,' she concluded.
Fox News
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Fox News
'Married... With Children' stars expose behind-the-scenes drama of beloved sitcom
"Married… With Children" wasn't all laughs behind the scenes. Stars Christina Applegate and Katey Sagal candidly shared how brutally honest the cast members were on the set of the iconic '90s show. "We were a sarcastic, cynical bunch," Sagal admitted on her "Pie" podcast, with husband Kurt Sutter. "You weren't safe, really. You turned your back, somebody's going to talk s--- on you." Applegate, their guest on the podcast, chimed in and recalled the moment she realized people were trash-talking her while she was steps away in her dressing room. "I could hear being talked s--- about in my dressing room on the monitor," she said. "I'd come up from rehearsal and I can hear everybody on set, literally talking s--- about me." "I was like, 'Wow, I was just there 20 seconds ago,'" she shared of her reaction. Sagal played Applegate's onscreen mother on the show, which ran from 1987 until 1997. Applegate previously revealed that the pressures she faced on "Married … with Children" led to her developing an eating disorder. In March, the "Dead to Me" actress opened up about being a child star and how it deeply impacted her health being in the spotlight. "Playing that character kind of did things to me in my psyche that were no bueno – like anorexia," she explained on her "MeSsy" podcast while speaking to guest Sagal at the time. "Yeah, a pretty bad eating disorder started when I was doing that show that lasted for a really long time," she said. Applegate said that she never told anyone about the disorder and was "very, very private about it." "I would hide in bathrooms to eat, because I had so much shame around eating that I would hide on the airplanes, like when we went to London," she said. "I remember hiding in there to eat like one shrimp, 'cause I was so afraid if anyone saw me eat that they'd think I was going to try to get fat or something. I don't know. I was in such a dark space." Sagal agreed that Applegate was "very much scrutinized" on the show because she was the "sex symbol." Being a sex symbol at 17 would "f--- with" anyone's head, Sagal said, adding that "it was a very misogynistic show." "Chrissy was very much scrutinized and tried to keep in a box," Sagal continued. "… So they put her in tighter skirts and shorter skirts, so, there was a lot of that." Applegate admitted that the provocative wardrobe choices were actually her idea. Her character, Kelly Bundy, was originally written as a "tough" "biker girl," but she said she was inspired by a girl interviewed for the 1981 documentary, "The Decline of Western Civilization: Part II: The Metal Years." "And she had this big f---ing hair, and a white Lycra dress, and I went to the wardrobe department and I said, 'We're changing this, We gotta represent the zeitgeist of this rock, slutty video vixen thing that's going on in the world right now where the men and the women all look the same. You know? They have the same hairdos.' So, that's where she came from." Set in Chicago, the series revolved around the Bundy family. Sagal and Applegate starred alongside Ed O'Neill, David Faustino and more.
News.com.au
3 days ago
- Health
- News.com.au
‘You're the first person to ask me about that': Glennon Doyle on body image, resilience and Ivanka Trump
Author and podcaster Glennon Doyle tackles life's biggest questions, the 'self-help' label – and the Trumps. Stellar: Your new book We Can Do Hard Things was created with the backdrop of a very difficult time for yourself, your wife Abby Wambach and your sister Amanda Doyle, who co-wrote this book and host the popular podcast of the same name with you. You were dealing with an anorexia diagnosis. Abby had lost her beloved brother. Amanda had a breast cancer diagnosis. What was navigating that time like for you? Glennon Doyle: My sister and my wife are my people. Maybe because I depend on the two of them [so much], I don't actually have many friends in a wider circle. I'm used to one of them being steady. When I got my new anorexia diagnosis – I've been dealing with eating disorders since I was 10 – I felt humiliated. Embarrassed. I couldn't believe I'm still dealing with this. I felt like everyone in my life was gonna be like, get over it. But it felt like I was drowning and I looked over at the shore and both the lifeguards were passed out. My lifeguards were also having their own moment. Glennon Doyle (continued): It feels like a very bad design of life that when trauma comes, that's the time that we can't remember anything we know. That's the time we can't call up all the wisdom we've learnt about how to make it through. That sucks. Trauma causes this little mini dissociation. Unfortunately Abby felt the same way and so did Amanda. So we were just kind of staring at each other blinking. And this cool thing happened. I started writing down little sentences or quotes or paragraphs that we had said to each other on the podcast and sending them to my sister to help her through the cancer thing. Listen to the full interview with Glennon Doyle on Something To Talk About below: Then she started writing down things about grief for Abby. And we had this little file going around. And Abby started writing things down for me about bodies. We kept this file that we were just using as an anchor outside of ourselves, which is funny because I've spent my entire life telling people that they have all the answers inside of them. I'm no longer positive that's true. Three months later, my friend was going through this horrible break-up and I sent her the file we had about grief. And she wrote back and said, 'Glennon, can you make me this for all the categories of life? This is what I need.' And I thought, yeah. I actually can do that. And that's how it started. That's how the book was born. Stellar: The book is an exploration of 20 questions that we all wrestle with throughout our lives, and features conversations you've had with 118 'of the world's most brilliant wayfinders'. How did you pull that off? Glennon Doyle: Some of the passages are from texts between friends, but most of them are from conversations that we had on our podcast. Over time the conversations we had on that podcast really rewired our minds and hearts and the way we saw the world. As we pored through those conversations, we realised people are really talking about the same 20 questions over and over again from their particular slice of life. So all I had to do was to wrangle all these people and say 'How about this incredible, brilliant thing that you said be put in print?' And most of them were like, 'Great. I sound very smart in that.' The people in this book are some of the most open-minded, justice-minded, love-minded and community-minded people on earth. We've got a lot going on in this country [the US] right now. It really feels like the whole idea of self-help and individual optimisation has failed us. And so what I'm very proud of is that this book is about collective wisdom. It's about: we can't figure this out by ourselves, we have to look at the world from as many different perspectives as there are people. And I just think that's why it's resonating so much here. It's about the collective. Stellar: You're often referred to as a self-help guru. Would you agree with that assessment? Glennon Doyle: Don't get me started on the self-help. I have so many male counterparts who write about the same things that I write about, who write about power and power dynamics and life and relationships even, and politics and community. Do you think that any of them are ever labelled 'self-help'? My books will be in the self-help aisle. My counterparts, men, will be in leadership. Do you ever hear a man's work described as self-help? No, no, no. Because men, they're good to go. They just need some leadership skills. Women are just a mess, and they just need help with their little selves. That distinction is in every area, right? That's the literary version, but even, [with] our bodies, men are taught to bulk up [and get] bigger, bigger, bigger and women are taught to get smaller. Money. Men are taught to invest. Women are taught to save. Every single category is about men. Just get bigger, get bolder, go for it. And women … Self-help. You're not even ready to leave the room. Just get smaller and smaller and fix yourself before you can even approach the world. So yes, I have many issues with the self-help title and I think it has a lot to do with gender. The whole navel-gazing thing is so interesting. Like, God forbid a man do a little bit of self-reflection. I would like some men to look harder at their navels. Honestly, I think that would do us all a little bit of good. Stellar: In your home country of the United States, does it feel like a time when people are searching for answers and feeling more isolated than ever? Glennon Doyle: It's a nightmare here. It's awful. We're seeing our neighbours be rounded up in front of us. I see it with my own eyes all the time. I was just in children's immigration court watching two-year-olds represent themselves, separated from their families. My family and every LGBTQ family I know is terrified. Parents with trans kids are leaving if they can. It's a really scary time here. With this book, we did a tour. I didn't want to do that. That's so much 'leaving of my house'. Not just answering my door, but standing on the actual stages. The incredible thing was, I think we have this feeling in the States right now, a lot of media is being suppressed and so it can feel like you're the only one who cares or the only one who's afraid or angry or wishes for something better. And this tour was so important to me because it was auditoriums and theatres full of people who were so hopeful and so angry and so united and so beautiful. They say hopelessness is just the feeling that nobody else cares, that you're alone. And so that tour that we did with the We Can Do Hard Things book, I think reinvigorated a lot of us and just reminded us there are still a lot of people here who care, and who will not stand for what's going down right now here. Listen to the full interview with Glennon Doyle on Something To Talk About below: Stellar: You have used your platform to advocate for many causes, including speaking out against the Trump administration, particularly during the election campaign in 2024. Recently Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka posted on Instagram a picture of herself holding your memoir Untamed. How did that moment sit with you? Glennon Doyle: You're the first person to ask me about that. My team sent it to me. I was stunned. I just didn't process it completely. I can tell you honestly that my best guess is she didn't read it all the way through. There's an entire essay about her dad in it that is about how unbelievable it is that this man is being seen as a leader of what is supposed to be Christian nationalism. So I think she probably didn't get all the way through. But all I can say is, I hope that she does read it. I hope she reads it really, really carefully. That's what I'll say about that.
Fox News
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Fox News
‘Full House' star Candace Cameron Bure says she was put on diet at 12 when she started filming hit show
Candace Cameron Bure was just 12 years old when she was faced with the intense pressures of Hollywood. Bure, now 49, candidly shared how she was placed on a diet at a young age while starring on "Full House." The actress said the decision was made out of fear. "My parents were really afraid," she explained on "The Candace Cameron Bure Podcast." She recalled how the struggles of Tracey Gold, who co-starred with her brother Kirk Cameron in "Growing Pains," changed her parents' approach to her health – Gold had battled an eating disorder and stepped away from the show to receive treatment at the time. "I had cheeks and I had thicker arms and I was, like, a normal 12-year-old, you know?" she said. "I really was a normal 12-year-old, but I had a little bit more fat on me than other kids on TV. They were just fearful that I would develop an eating disorder, just because of all of the pressures." Bure continued to say that the focus at home quickly turned to food – although her parents framed it as a lesson in developing a healthy lifestyle. "Let's make sure we make good choices with food," she remembered. "Everyone in my house was always on a diet. My mom was always on a diet. My sisters were always on a diet. I was always put on a diet. But it wasn't like, 'Oh, you have to lose weight.'" Bure's parents told her at a young age, "We want to teach you how to be healthy and exercise." While her parents may have taken steps to help Bure maintain a healthier lifestyle at a young age, the child star admitted the mindset may have backfired. "That completely shaped my viewpoint that I had about myself and the feelings about my body," she said. "I'm on TV... and I don't want to be too fat compared to other actors. My parents never wanted a producer to come up to me and say, like, 'We need your child to lose weight,' so let's do everything preventative." Bure continued to open up about her insecurities at a young age. "That very thing just shaped the way I looked at my body, which was like, 'Oh, it's not good enough the way it is right now. That kind of started young," she said, "and continued through my teenage years." Bure rose to fame at the age of 11 when she landed the role of Donna Jo "D.J." Tanner on the family television series. She starred alongside the late Bob Saget, John Stamos, Dave Coulier, Jodie Sweetin, Lori Loughlin, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen and more in "Full House." The popular television sitcom aired from 1987 until 1995.
