Sharna Burgess is opening up about her troubled relationship with food.
In response to a fan’s question, “Have you ever struggled with an eating disorder?”, the “Dancing with the Stars” alum candidly admitted on Sunday’s Instagram “Ask Me Anything” that “Most of my struggles were with binge eating and restricting my diet.”
Ms Burgess, 40, added that she had “a very complicated relationship with food” throughout her teens and 20s, but that her habits “changed” in her 30s.
The Australian-born performer has previously spoken about the added pressures that come with her weight as a professional dancer.
“I really struggled with my body because of dancing,” she said in a 2021 interview with Australia’s Good Health and Wellbeing.
“I remember when I was 15, my teachers put me on the scale every two days and told me whether I needed to lose weight or not. Every week I was told I needed to lose more weight. And I certainly wasn’t overweight.”
Ms Burgess said dancing had “instilled in her a negative body image” which affected the way she ate.
“It also created a negative eating pattern of overeating one day and fasting the next. I struggled with that for years,” she explained. “Even in my 20s, I looked in the mirror and saw a 15-year-old kid who was being told every week that she needed to lose more weight.”
However, things started to change when she joined the cast of ‘DWTS’ in 2011.
“Seeing how much the celebrities on the show transformed and learned to love their bodies by moving and dancing really rocked my perspective,” she explained. “I thought, ‘Wow, I’ve been doing this my whole life.’
“I began to see something different in the mirror. I began to see a body that had helped me through incredibly difficult times, created beautiful moments, won championships, and given me a life I never thought possible.”
Burgess’ last season as a DWTS professional was in 2021, when she partnered with her current fiancé, Brian Austin Green. She left home the following year after welcoming her son Zayn.
But that doesn’t rule out the possibility of the dance pro returning to the long-running show in the future.
“I never say no,” she said in an Instagram Q&A on Sunday. “I was supposed to do something with them last season, but I was already in New York preparing for a play and couldn’t commit. I love[the cast and crew]the show so much that I always want to be on set.”
