Jennette McCurdy

Jennette McCurdy is a woman of many talents. She’s been an actress since childhood, and over the course of her career, has added singer, writer, director, and even YouTuber to her list of titles. Tragically, all of this success came with a cost. This past March, shortly after National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, McCurdy opened up about her personal struggles with eating disorders in an essay published on HuffPost. The beautiful, heart-wrenching piece chronicles her relationship with food, starting at age eleven and continuing up until now. 

In the essay, McCurdy is candid about two of the major contributors to her development of anorexia as a child: Hollywood and her mother. As a child actress, being small meant scoring more roles, so at an incredibly young age, she was rewarded for eating less and being thin. Rather than being concerned about her daughter’s deteriorating eating habits, McCurdy’s mother instead encouraged it. McCurdy doesn’t blame her mother, however, as her mother struggled with the very same disorder and likely never fully recovered. Regardless, her mother’s support of her poor eating habits greatly affected McCurdy’s self-image, and before long, she “couldn’t have stopped if [she] wanted to.”

At fifteen, when her Nickelodeon show iCarly was gaining popularity, her fixation with food reached a new height. “I became even more fixated on food and my body, “ she writes. “I monitored every bite I took. I exercised obsessively. I measured my thighs with a measuring tape every night before bed.” At eighteen, her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and McCurdy’s eating disorder took on a new face: binge eating. A few years later, shortly before losing her mother to cancer, her disordered eating changed once again as her binge eating developed into bulimia. To make matters worse, Hollywood’s competitive nature once again reared its ugly head; phrases such as “keep doing what you’re doing” meant a lot more to McCurdy than most people realized, and if they did realize, they did not seem to care. 

Eventually, McCurdy’s thoughts about her own disorder darkened. She convinced herself that she just “wasn’t good enough at disordered eating,” that if she were “better” at it, she would be able to be anorexic again. She was ashamed of her bulimia for not being high enough in Hollywood’s “disordered eating hierarchy.” Her habits only continued to get worse until her sister-in-law finally stepped in and told her she needed to get help.

McCurdy’s experience with therapy was a process. Her first try with a “spiritual type” therapist named Laura started out strong, but fell apart when Laura suggested that McCurdy try inpatient treatment. Not ready to give up her disordered eating, McCurdy stopped seeing Laura and returned to her purging habits. It was another year and a half before she was ready to give treatment another try. While filming the second season of the Citytv show “Between,” she started working with an eating disorder specialist named Hank, who was Laura’s opposite in every way. Hank helped McCurdy identify her “eating disorder voice,” which she credits as “the most pivotal aspect of [her] recovery.” Even so, recovery was not easy. McCurdy describes it as similar to ending a toxic relationship; as devastating as her disordered eating had been, it was also a part of her identity and she had to learn who she was without it.

Despite the inevitable relapses, McCurdy didn’t give up. She’s been in recovery maintenance for two years now. “I still hear that old eating disorder voice,” McCurdy shares. “But luckily I hear it less and less often. And when I do hear it, I now have the tools to muffle it.” McCurdy has been able to take the time to reflect on what she’s been through and what it means for her, and she hopes that by sharing her experiences, she might just show someone else struggling with the same things that they are not alone. Recovery is no walk on the beach, but it is attainable.

If you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, call the National Eating Disorder Association hotline at 1-800-931-2237.