TikTok stars and sisters Charli and Dixie D’Amelio are opening up about mental health on their show, The D’Amelio Show. In the first episode, 17-year-old Charli opens up about how her sudden overnight fame on the platform contributed to her having an “unhealthy relationship” with food.
“Whenever I first started TikTok… I was very unhealthy,” she said. “I would lose a bunch of weight, and then gain a bunch of weight, and then lose it, and my comments would switch up with that.”
The young star is the most followed person on TikTok, with 123.6 million followers. She amassed her following by doing dances and lip-synching on the platform.
Related: Forget body positivity, here’s why body neutrality is where it’s at.
She also opened up around binge eating, followed by making herself sick, and then fasting. “It was really bad,” she said. “You could see it because I’m short, so when I put on weight people would be like, ‘Oh, you gained weight,’ and then they’re like, ‘Oh, she lost so much weight, she looks so good.’” At her lowest weight, people would make comments saying she looked like “skin and bones,” she said.
Last April, she publicly told people to stop talking about her body on Twitter:
STOP TALKING ABOUT MY BODY!
it’s not your place to tell me if i’m losing weight or gaining weight— charli d’amelio (@charlidamelio) April 27, 2020
Related: 8 ways to embrace your beauty, love your body and feel more confident.
She continued to open up about her feelings around food, explaining: “It’s extremely hard to go from having a very unhealthy mindset with food to a healthy one, especially when you’ve dealt with it alone for so long.”
However, she added that being able to be open about her struggles with other influencers has helped her. “At least now I have friends that I can talk to and that made me work so much harder to get a healthy relationship with food again,” she said.
If you have an eating disorder, call the National Eating Disorder Information Centre (NEDIC) at the toll free helpline at 1-866-633-4220.
