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Jeanette McCurdy brought laughs to a generation of kids as “iCarly” sidekick Sam Puckett, but at the time she was starring in the hit Nickelodeon sitcom her real-life teenage years were far darker, including a painful struggle with bulimia that she credits to her mother.
McCurdy appeared on the “Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown” podcast and discussed how her mother, who died in 2013 of breast cancer, put her on the path to developing a severe eating disorder.
It all began when McCurdy began developing breasts at age 11, with her mother suggesting she stick to a strict diet in order to keep them from growing larger so it wouldn’t impact her career as a child actor.
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“My mom was the person that introduced me to anorexia, actually,” McCurdy told host Mayim Bialik. “I said, ‘Well, how can I not develop boobs? I don’t want those. And she said, ‘Well, there’s a thing called calorie restriction.’ Those were her exact words. She did not say the word ‘anorexia.’ I did not hear the word ‘anorexia’ until… I overheard a doctor talking with my mom a year later when I had lost X amount of weight and was rail-thin, and it sounded like a dinosaur to me. I remember that distinctly, like: Hmm, somebody’s talking about me like I’m a dinosaur. But it was her talking to my mom about my eating disorder, which my mom denied in order for her to be able to support it.”
It’s only since her mother’s death, McCurdy explained, that she’s been able to come to terms with her role in her eating disorder.
“At the time I just thought, ‘Mom’s looking out for me, Mom wants me to not have breasts so that I don’t have breast cancer, Mom wants me to look young so I can book more roles so I can support the family and do the thing,’” she said.
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After her mother’s death, McCurdy went off the rails. “That same week [of her death] was the first time that I had sex, the first time that I made myself throw up — bulimia, which I then had for a few years — and the first time that I had a drink of alcohol… Those coping mechanisms all kind of hit at once.”
Her bulimia grew so bad, she admitted, that she was purging between five and 10 times each day.
“Anytime that I wasn’t purging, I was thinking about my next time purging,” she said. “That was how my mind was just oriented.”
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According to McCurdy, the “turning point” came when she was confronted by her sister-in-law during a Thanksgiving meal, discovering what she thought was her well-hidden secret had become apparent to everyone.
“I thought that I was this gifted secret-keeper,” she said. “I wasn’t good at that. That was pretty much all I had during that time, was hoping and clinging to the fact that maybe my shame was my own but knowing that, eh, you actually weren’t pulling the wool over anybody’s eyes, that was a bummer.”