Lucy Hale Cries As She Reveals Eating Disorder & Shares Difficult Journey To Get Sober
The ‘Pretty Little Liars’ star opened up about working on trying to get sober since she was a young adult, shortly after celebrating one year of sobriety.
Lucy Hale admitted to struggling with an eating disorder in a new interview with Steve Bartlett on his Diary of a CEO podcast, which was released on Thursday, February 23. The actress, 33, also opened up about her journey with sobriety and how she’d been working toward getting sober since she was 20 years old. Lucy got emotional while discussing the hardships.
After discussing her early career, Lucy said that her eating disorder started to appear as she was getting her start in acting. She admitted that her eating disorder was one of her big focuses early in her career. “I think for me, it was all I thought about from the moment I woke up until I went to bed at night: ‘How much should I eat? How much should I work out?’ I would step on a scale 30 times a day. I was eating so little that it was shocking,” she said.
The Pretty Little Liars star opened up and said that looking back it’s tough to think about how she was struggling in that time. “It’s so sad to think that I hated myself so much that I couldn’t even give it basic needs like food. Are you kidding me? That is so tragic,” she said.
Lucy continued and spoke about how social media can only increase the pressure, and she also said that she’s sure that there are many women with difficult relationships with food “because society makes it really freaking hard to like the way you look.”
With much time, Lucy said that she has come a long way, and now she’s much more comfortable with herself. “I like and love and respect my body too,” she said.
Early in the interview, Lucy admitted to having “very addictive tendencies and a very addictive personality,” and she later opened up about how she struggled with alcohol, describing herself as a “textbook binge drinker,” before speaking about stopping. “I’ve been working on getting sober since I was 20. I’m 33. It takes time. It took time, and it took patience with myself,” she said. “It did a couple of things. It was like this feeling of ‘Oh my god. This is what I’ve been searching for my whole life. I’m my truest self. I’m so much funnier and cooler, and people like me.’ That’s all bulls***. Guess what? Not true. I was not myself.”
Lucy had revealed that she had celebrated a year of sobriety on January 2 with a self-love Valentine’s Day Instagram post. She shared a photo of a cake, revealing that she was a year sober and spoke about her journey in the caption. “On January 2, 2023, I celebrated one year of sobriety. While this journey has mostly been private, I felt compelled tonight to let anyone who is struggling know that you are not alone and you are loved,” she wrote.