Sadie Robertson, 23, wowed ABC viewers with her second place finish on Dancing with the Stars in Season 19, but the Duck Dynasty star revealed that her fans weren’t so kind after her time on the dance stage was done. “During Dancing With the Stars, you work out so much and you’re dancing 24/7, so no wonder you have the body of your lifetime! I had this body that I never thought I’d have. I had a six-pack for two weeks, but then Thanksgiving hit and it went away. People started to comment,” Sadie told Entertainment Tonight in an interview published on Oct. 1, six years after starring on DWTS.
“They were such innocent comments at first, like, everything was great. But whenever my body started looking a little different, that’s when the struggle came in,” the DWTS alum explained. “There were people in my life, who were just really negative influences, that would say things that were not uplifting about the way that I looked and how I needed to maintain the body that I had. It was so wrong. I was insecure at the time, so I believed them and thought, ‘Oh, I need to push it.'”
Critics would even start commenting on her burgeoning modeling career. “People would say things like, ‘Oh, if you lost 10 more pounds, you would look like a real model. I was literally 115 pounds and already unhealthy. That just messed my mind up,” Sadie sadly revealed. She then elaborated on how “an eating disorder is different in a lot of different ways,” after Sadie herself took on a “really unhealthy view” towards her body.
“You can’t stop thinking about your body, how you look, how you should eat. You’re counting the calories, you’re sizing up your legs and all those different things,” Sadie explained. “You’re just kind of completely gripped by it and that’s kind of where I was. I would look at myself in the mirror and I would think, ‘I’m fat,’ and I was not at all.” She said that this attitude even “affects a lot of other people around you,” although Sadie was unaware of this at the time.
Sadie finally broke through the unhealthy thoughts associated with her eating disorder thanks to her faith. “I started praising God and thanking him for the way that I looked, instead of looking in the mirror and saying, ‘Ugh, I wish my arms were thinner, I wish my legs were more toned, I wish I had her eyebrows’…whatever it was that I would tell myself. Instead I would tell myself, ‘I am so thankful that I have this. I’m so thankful that my legs actually serve the purpose that they should and that they’re able to run, that my arms are able to carry things. That my stomach one day, hopefully, will be able to carry a baby.’ Just what we’re actually designed and created for,” Sadie revealed.
Sadie is now 23 years old and thriving! (Photo Courtesy of Instagram/@legitsadierob)
This allowed Sadie to “stop thinking about [herself] as much.” It was still a process, since she was still a teenager from Louisiana who suddenly began competing on TV’s most famous dance show. “For me, I started struggling with a lot of insecurity of who I was because of a lot of people telling me who I am and not really feeling like that was me.” She added, “I remember thinking these thoughts, like, ‘I don’t know how to be that famous girl that everybody loves and follows on Instagram.’ I remember praying and saying, ‘God, I think you chose the wrong person. This makes me nervous. This makes me insecure. This is not something I’m thriving in.'”
Many years have passed since Sadie danced on ABC in 2014, and a lot has changed — in addition to having a healthier view of her body, she is also a married woman! The Unfiltered podcast host tied the knot with Christian Huff on her parents’ farm in Louisiana in Nov. 2019, which was followed by a romantic honeymoon in Cabo San Lucas.
