Actress Jordana Brewster has revealed the cause of her eating disorder and how she worked to get rid of it.
In a candid new essay for Glamour, the 41-year-old opened up about her divorce from Andrew Form and moving on with her current boyfriend Mason Morfit, revealing that at one point in her marriage, she felt out of control and became hyper-focused on food and her body.
The Fast & Furious star wrote, “The first year of our marriage, I started to binge and developed an eating disorder. He was kind and safe and supported me. I knew something was wrong with me. I had no creative output or outlet.”
“I felt isolated, and the passivity drove me crazy,” she continued. “While my husband worked a full day on set, I would do the occasional audition. I was bored.”
Brewster recalled, “I would raid the mini bar at the Four Seasons for snacks and then promptly go downstairs to make sure it was restocked and paid for before my husband realized anything was missing. I had a buzzing sense of chaos within me that clashed with my actual inertia. I was stuck.”
She said that a few years later, her eating disorder “swung to the other extreme” and she began to “restrict rather than binge,” according to PEOPLE.
“The cliché that controlling your food gives you the illusion of control of your life is true. But it also does something else: A fixation with your body gives you tunnel vision,” Brewster explained. “I was so focused on the number on the scale and the number of calories I consumed in a day that I ignored all other problems. I didn’t look closely at my career, my marriage.”
The Invisible Circus star added that “years of therapy helped me through my control and eating issues, and now I’m lucky to be at a level of peace with my body. If body issues do come up, I deal with them head-on.”
Brewster also revealed that the divorce “wasn’t my fault or my ex-husband’s fault.” She explained that timing factored into their emotional “growing apart.”
Last summer, Brewster told Health magazine about her relationship with food, revealing at the time, “I am a control freak, so I went through phases where I was obsessed with the number on the scale and I didn’t want to deviate.”
“I was never anorexic, but I was definitely too controlled to be healthy,” she added. “It is all about balance and feeling comfortable in your skin.”
