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Camila Mendes Gets Candid About Her Struggles With An Eating Disorder, Revealing It Got Really Bad During 'Riverdale' Season 1

Camila Mendes Gets Candid About Her Struggles With An Eating Disorder, Revealing It Got Really Bad During 'Riverdale' Season 1

Camila Mendes is getting candid about her struggles with an eating disorder.

The 28-year-old actress spoke on the Going Mental podcast, revealing that while her struggles began when she was younger, it turned into a bigger battle for her while she was filming the first season of Riverdale.

Camila revealed that as she watched episodes back, she would notice things about her physique that contributed even more to her body image issues.

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“I would watch every episode and be like, ‘Oh my God, my stomach there…’ I was so insecure and it really fueled my eating disorder,” she told host Eileen Kelly. “I had one at various points in my life. A little bit in high school, towards the end of senior year, and then a little bit in college, and then it came back [during] Season 1 of Riverdale.”

Camila went on, explaining that “when you’re in your early 20s, your body is fluctuating, my body hadn’t settled into itself yet. I was looking at myself, taking myself apart, my stomach, you know, my arms, my chin, anything — I would obsess over [it]. It got in the way of my acting, because when I was acting on camera … it really f****s with your process.”

She then revealed that she started to see a therapist for help with her eating disorder, as well as a nutritionist who “helped me overcome my fear of bread.”

“I was really afraid of eating carbs,” Camila shared. “And what would happen is I would avoid it for a long period of time and then I would binge and eat a bunch and then purge. So it was this terrible cycle, and she helped me overcome that by reintroducing bread into my life to be like, ‘See, it’s not going to kill you.’ Now, it’s something that rarely comes up in therapy.”

She admits that she had this mindset of fear, because as she would lose weight, she was told, “You look so good.”

“When I don’t hear that, I think I look terrible — when nobody’s commenting on how thin I look.”

Camila is not the first to open up about having an eating disorder. Just recently, The Last of Us star Bella Ramsey did, as well as Sam Heughan.

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Posted to: Camila Mendes