Culture
DWTS Alum Sharna Burgess Remembers Her Eating Disorder and Her ‘Very Complicated’ Relationship with Food
Sharna Burgess Opens up on Battle with Bingeing and Restricting
Sharna Burgess has revealed that she had a bit of a rough time.
On Jan. 18, the Dancing with the Stars star held a Q&A on Instagram Stories and one of the fans asked if ever in her life, the DWTS pro had an eating disorder. The 40-year-old revealed:
“Most of the time with binging and restricting that was my problem. As a teen and [in] my 20s, I had a super complicated relationship with food.”
At the same time, the celebrity dancer said that she got well and that the way she treated “food” totally “changed” when she was a 30-year-old.
Sharna Burgess Says Dance Culture Was a Major Factor in Her Body Dysmorphia and Disordered Eating
It is Sharna Burgess’ revelation that dancing culture is one of the main reasons for her body dysmorphia and worsening relationship with food. In 2021, during an interview with Australia’s Good Health & Wellbeing, the former Dancing with the Stars professional disclosed that she had body dysmorphia from a very young age.
“My body and I really struggled from dance,” Burgess recalled that when she was 15 years old she would be weighed every two days. “They told us whether we needed to lose weight, and it was done through the weigh-ins. Every week they told me that I had to lose more weight — and I definitely wasn’t fat.”
Burgess pointed out that dancing was only one factor in her life that helped create the environment where negative body images were made. “I can say for sure, it created a negative body image,” she further revealed that eventually, disordered eating cycles led to bingeing and restricting habits that continued to plague her well into her adulthood.
“When I was in my 20s, I used to see in the mirror the girl who was 15 and who was told every week she had to lose more weight,” she confided.
Sharna Burgess Credits DWTS For Shifting Her Negative Body Image.
Sharna Burgess revealed that Dancing with the Stars had been a major factor in the restoration of her relationship with her body after joining the show in 2011.
“For me, it was seeing how much the celebrities on the show changed and ended up loving their bodies by being able to move and dance that really changed my perspective,” she said.
She watched others accepting the bodies and this made her question her own practice. “I thought, ‘How come I have been hurting myself like this all these years?’ I began to recognize the body in the mirror in a totally different way — a body that had withstood the most difficult times, made me fall in love with the most beautiful moments, won championships, and gave me the life I never thought possible.”
According to Burgess, the seed of negative body image started when she was a child dancer, and it became part of her identity for many years. “The thing is, if a child develops a negative body image, it can take them a very long time to be able to identify with their bodies in a completely different way,” she shared. “For me, though, that was my very first breakthrough.”
