15 Stunning Celebs You Never Knew Overcame Shocking Eating Disorders

#1 Zosia Mamet

Mamet—who plays the loveable Shoshanna on HBO's "Girls"—bravely revealed to Glamour magazine in 2014 that she's battled an eating disorder since she's been a child, touching on how society's obsession with thinness played a role in her disroder. "You want to control something, and then society says, 'Hey, how about controlling the way you look? Skinny is beautiful,'" wrote Mamet. "Your obsession feels justified."

#2 Kesha

Musician Kesha wrote an in-depth piece for ELLE detailing her experience in an eating disorder rehabilitation centre:

“I’ve always tried to be a crusader for loving yourself, but I’d been finding it harder and harder to do personally. I felt like part of my job was to be as skinny as possible, and to make that happen, I had been abusing my body. I just wasn’t giving it the energy it needed to keep me healthy and strong. My brain told me to just suck it up and press on, but in my heart I knew that something had to change. So I made the decision to practise what I preach. I put my career on hold and sought treatment. I had to learn to treat my body with respect.”

#3 Katharine McPhee

The "Smash" star has been open about struggling with an eating disorder during her stint on "American Idol." “The more I focused on my weight, the worse my bulimia got,” she told People magazine.

#4 Christina Ricci

Former child star Christina Ricci has openly discussed how her fame affected her recovery from anorexia:

“Somebody actually found out about it and outed [me] while I was recovering … It was a horrifying thing to do to a 14-year-old trying to cope with a devastating illness. And, out of rage, I vowed that no one would ever be able to out me for a secret again. So I was going to be completely honest in the rest of my life. I don’t want to be hurt in that way again.”

#5 Demi Lovato

Before she was 10 years old, Demi Lovato had already become close friends with one of pop culture’s most recognizable figures: Barney the Dinosaur. Halfway into her teens, Lovato had become a veritable pop princess in her own right, through her appearances on multiple Disney Channel original films. Unfortunately, either despite or because of all this early fame, Lovato claims she was harshly bullied as a child, perhaps influencing her later struggles with mental illness and self-harm. Included amongst Lovato’s problems was severe bulimia, something she admitted at age 18 when entering a rehab facility for the first time. Lovato would spend the next several years in and out of treatment, achieving her sobriety around 2012. It would appear her struggles with weight went away with the drug problems, as Lovato has managed a complete comeback to music and television, now more successful than ever. Unfortunately, her example alone won’t curb the problem, as evidenced by the controversy surrounding pro-anorexic jokes that continued to litter the Disney Channel on shows like Shake it Up and So Random.

#6 Portia de Rossi

The better half of funny lady Ellen DeGeneres famously struggled with anorexia and bulimia during her stint on "Ally McBeal." She limited her calories to 300 per day, in addition to binging and purging.

#7 Lindsay Lohan

“I was sick, and I was scared too,” Lohan told Vanity Fair in 2010 of her struggle with bulimia. “I had people sit me down and say, ‘You’re going to die if you don’t take care of yourself.’”

#8 Jamie-Lynn Sigler

The "Sopranos" actress has been one of the most outspoken about her longtime struggles with bulimia, becoming an ambassador of sorts for all sorts of eating disorders.

#9 Mary-Kate Olsen

Thanks to the old adage that says two is better than one, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen were easily two of the most successful child stars in entertainment history. After getting their starts as toddlers on Full House, they started their own company, Dualstar, while still under 10 years old, getting promoted to co-Presidents upon their 18th birthday. Eventually, Dualstar created no less than three more TV shows and countless direct-to-video movies, making Mary-Kate and Ashley as wealthy as they were internationally famous. In their later years, the Olsens have taken their dominance to the fashion world through their brand, The Row. Despite this unparalleled success, things haven’t always been perfect for the girls, and the implication they do everything together might turn out to be misleading as well. In 2004, Mary-Kate alone went public about her struggles with anorexia nervosa and began treatment for her condition. Sister Ashley has never reported any such problems, showing how personal and internalized the disorders often tend to be.

#10 Lady Gaga

In 2013, Lady Gaga launched a section of her website entitled “Body Revolution”, where she encouraged her fans to share photos of themselves and embrace what they considered to be their flaws:

“My weight loss/gain since I was child has tormented me. No amount of help has ever healed my pain about it. But YOU have. My boyfriend prefers me curvier, when I eat and am healthy and not so worried about my looks, I’m happy. Happier then I’ve ever been. I am not going to go on a psycho-spree because of scrutiny. This is who I am. And I am proud at any size. And I love you, and want you to be proud in any form you may take as well.”

#11 Nicole Scherzinger

Before there was American Idol, there was Popstars USA on The WB, a series that birthed the girl group Eden’s Crush in 2001. Despite great success with their debut single and album, Eden’s Crush wasn’t meant to last, but lead singer and former Days of the New Member Nicole Scherzinger wasn’t ready to let that be the end of her entertainment career. At first, Scherzinger attempted to go solo, but she soon found herself at the center of a second act called The Pussycat Dolls, which went on to become one of the best-selling girl groups of all time. The downside was that Scherzinger also developed bulimia while the Dolls were at their peak, due to her discomfort appearing in photo shoots wearing only her underwear. To hide her condition, Scherzinger also became extremely private and distant during this period of her life, no doubt compounding her problem by pretending it didn’t exist. After suffering for eight years, her healing began when she admitted there was a problem, and she’s maintained a healthier weight ever since.

#12 Zoë Kravitz

Being the daughter of a rock star and an actress came with many blatant pros and cons for Zoë Kravitz, spawn of Lenny Kravitz and Lisa Bonet. On the plus side, Zoë had a first-hand view of the entertainment industry from a very young age, which proved invaluable when she followed in their footsteps as an actress and the frontwoman of her band Lolawolf. Granted, the downside is pretty much the same, that being that she didn’t even need to become a child star for the pressures of Hollywood to affect her very early on. To begin with, her mother was known worldwide for being beautiful, and in her own words, her “dad dated a lot of supermodels.” Seeing drop-dead gorgeous women all around her in her everyday life, Zoë’s somehow developed anorexia, and her bulimia began in high school. She’s gotten much better since then, but it didn’t exactly stop when she graduated. For reasons that should be obvious, albeit also a sign of danger, Kravitz starred in the film The Road Within as a woman with anorexia and nearly fell back into her old habits while preparing for the role. During that period, she slimmed down to a mere 90 lbs.

#13 Kate Winslet

Actress Kate Winslet has spoken about the weight loss addiction she developed as a teenager, and has admitted to starving herself in order to win acting roles:

“When I was 15, I was nearly 14 stone. I was uncomfortable and self-conscious. I knew I wanted to be an actress and was big. Over a year I sensibly got down to 10 stone. Then I became addicted to losing weight and went too far. I was never anorexic or bulimic. I went through a three-month experimental laxative time which was absolutely awful. Luckily I was strong enough to be able to say to myself, ‘What are you doing? You are just really hungry.’ The whole weight thing drives me crazy. This stuff is so important to me because I have been there and know what a vicious cycle it is.”

#14 Troian Bellisario

Pretty Little Liars actress Troian Bellisario has said that she developed anorexia as a result of the pressure she felt to perform well in school:

“I started self-harming when I was a junior. I would withhold food or withhold going out with my friends, based on how well I did that day in school … It was about wanting to please my father and mother and wanting to be perfect to everybody. I just thought if I ever expressed any sadness or anger or anything that’s going on with me, they would disown me. I kept a lot of it bottled up inside, and it turned into self-destructive behaviour.”

#15 Ginger Zee

“Meteorologist” is one of the lower rungs on the entertainment ladder, at least insofar as the glamour aspect is concerned, but that hasn’t stopped women like Ginger Zee from using their energetic presence to dominate the field. For those of us not entirely up to speed in the current weatherperson scene, Zee is the Chief Meteorologist for ABC News and Good Morning America, making her one of the highest profile and most successful women in her industry. Of course, even people uninterested in the weather might know that already, because Zee also wowed fans with slick performances on Dancing with the Stars, in which she and Valentin Chmerkovskiy placed third during the 22nd season. Zee’s life has been pretty great lately, and she herself admitted her body looked “pretty great” on DWTS, yet the fact she had to make the comment wasn’t merely an issue of ego. In fact, Zee hadn’t been so proud of how she looked much earlier in life as she also came forward about her struggles with eating disorders during her childhood. In contrast to the pressures of fame influencing most of this list, Zee felt her condition was mostly due to being depressed and internalizing problems about her parents’ divorce.