Camila Mendes has been outspoken about her eating disorder, dieting and body image this past year. Recently the Riverdale star was on the cover of Shape magazine and talked about her food anxiety and dealing with her eating disorder, bulimia.
“I’ve struggled with bulimia. It happened a little bit in high school and again when I was in college,” Mendes told Shape. “Then it came back when I started working in this industry with fittings all the time and watching myself on camera.”
Mendes went on to talk about her “emotional relationship” with food and eating. “I was so scared of carbs that I wouldn’t let myself eat bread or rice ever,” she recounted. But then after not letting herself eat carbs for a few weeks she would binge then purge. Mendes said she was “always punishing” herself about food.
It wasn’t until 2017 when she began seeing a therapist and a nutritionist that she began tackling her food demons. “So much of the anxiety I had about food went away when I started learning more about nutrition,” Mendes said. “My nutritionist completely cured my fear of carbs.”
Not only did her nutritionist helped her understand the importance of carbs, but she also helped cure Mendes of her “addiction to dieting.” Mendes claims that she hasn’t been on a fad diet for a year since seeing her nutritionist and she’s “very proud” of her accomplishments because she was always on some strange diet.
Mendes has spoken candidly about past dieting and eating disorder. Earlier this year she declared she was done with dieting and teamed up with Project HEAL. Mendes and fellow Riverdale star Lili Reinhart have called out magazines for photoshopping them.
“I realized that I have this platform, and young women and men who look up to me, and there is a tremendous power to do something positive with it,” Mendes told Shape. “It was definitely a very vulnerable thing to put that out there to almost 12 million people on social media. but that’s who I am. That’s me being authentically myself.”
Mendes continued, “This body-positivity movement we’re having right now is so amazing, and it’s helping me so much. I’m seeing all these people who I look up to, like Rihanna, open up about their weight fluctuations and loving themselves the way they are. That makes me love myself more too.”
