Demi, who is now 56, said she had an obsession with working out that started while she was training to play a naval lawyer in the 1992 movie A Few Good Men. Demi had recently given birth to her daughter Scout and was pushing herself to lose the baby weight.
I didnt feel like I could stop exercising, she wrote, per People . It was my job to fit into that unforgiving military uniform Id be wearing in two months in A Few Good Men. Getting in shape for that movie launched the obsession with working out that would consume me over the next five years. I never dared let up.
Demi said that because she was doing excessive exercising, there wasnt enough fat in her breast milk for Scout. And, as a result, her daughter wasnt growing the way she should. Scouts doctor urged Demi to supplement with formula. Demi said she was crushed by the advice, but kept on working out at the same pace.
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After A Few Good Men, Demi started filming Indecent Proposal and again worried about her weight. I would be on display again, and all I could think about was my body, my body, my body, she said. I doubled down on my already over-the-top exercise routine. I cut out carbs, I ran and I biked and I worked out on every machine imaginable.
Demi said she then contracted walking pneumonia and eased up a bit on her exercise routine, but she started up again when she began filming Striptease. When I was making Striptease, for breakfast I would measure out a half cup of oatmeal and prepare it with water, then for the rest of the day I would have only protein and some vegetablesand that was it, she said. If all this obsessing about my body sounds crazy to you, youre not wrong: eating disorders are crazy, they are a sickness. But that doesnt make them less real.
But Demi had to change that when she made G.I. Jane the next year. Demi said that bulking up enormously to play a naval officer helped her break her disorders. She was 138 pounds at the end of the movie, which was above her usual weight, and she decided she was over dieting. My usual reaction would have been to start starving myself again, to begin an exercise regime designed to reduce the bulk, but I did neither, she said. I had reached my limit. When I got home to Idaho, I had an epiphany in the shower one day: I just need to be my natural size.
Demi said she eventually turned to meditation to help with her body image issues. I added into my daily prayer a new mantra: to have the courage to be seen without padding or protection. I couldnt go on fighting my body and my weight; I had to make peace, she said. I started by giving up hard exercise. I never went back into the gym in the house. Never. The room it occupied is now my office.
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