Hilary Duff Opened Up About Her Experience With Eating Disorders

Hilary Duff gets more vulnerable than ever on her new album, luck... or something, but now, she’s opening up about a scarier time in her life. On the March 9 episode of Jay Shetty’s On Purpose podcast, the singer discussed her brief experience with eating disorders, which happened when she was a teenager at the height of tabloid culture.

Speaking about growing up in the early 2000s, Duff said she had “quite a bit of self-confidence” and a “good head on my shoulders,” but she wasn’t immune to the anxieties and comparisons that came with her career.

“Of course, those normal things came up,” she said. “Then on top of it, I was dealing with people commenting on my body at a young age, starting to get photographed, and people asking you how many times you weigh yourself or comparing you to people that were thinner than you or other girls in your line of work.”

As a result, she was affected by “insecurities” that made her self-conscious of her body. “I definitely struggled for a little while there, just trying to fit a certain mold and have control over something in my life,” she said. “Thankfully that was pretty short-lived, but definitely toyed with it during a time of... a lot of moving parts to my life and just trying to also form as a person.”

How Hilary Moved On

Duff first revealed her experience in a 2022 interview with Women’s Health Australia, stating that she briefly battled an eating disorder when she was 17, on the verge of 18. “Because of my career path, I can't help but be like, ‘I am on camera and actresses are skinny,’” she recalled. “It was horrifying.”

Speaking to Shetty, Duff revealed that major events, such as becoming a mother and entering a stable relationship with husband Matthew Koma, helped her heal from the pressure that had caused her to struggle in the first place.

“Honestly, I think it took just time and bigger things happening in my life, like having children, that took the spot of the other things that didn’t mean as much to worry about,” she explained. “Luckily, those things felt easy for me to replace.