Jennette McCurdy Recalls 'Disturbing' Moment Her Mom Taught Her Anorexia at 11: 'It Became Our Secret'
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Red Table Talk/Facebook Watch Jennette McCurdy on Red Table Talk
Jennette McCurdy is opening up about her years of suffering from eating disorders she learned from her mother.
On Wednesday's episode of Facebook Watch's Red Table Talk, McCurdy, 30, reflected on her childhood stardom from Nickelodeon's iCarly and how she battled disordered eating for years, including anorexia, binge eating and bulimia.
The former actress admitted that it was her late mother, Debra McCurdy, who introduced her to an unhealthy relationship with food, explaining to hosts Jada Pinkett Smith, Willow Smith and Adrienne Banfield Norris that her mom abused her physically and mentally before she died of breast cancer in 2013.
"I feel for anybody who relates to this. It's quite unfortunate, but my mom taught me anorexia. She taught me calorie restriction when I was 11," McCurdy said on the show. "I had felt a lump in my breast that I thought was, 'Oh, well, my mom had cancer, so I'm probably getting cancer.' And she said, 'No, Net, that's just boobies' And I said, 'Well, can I stop boobies from happening? I don't want boobies. I don't want to grow up.' "
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"And I knew that my mom really wanted me to stay young. She really, really made that clear to me," she continued. "She would sob and really clutch me intensely and say, like, 'I don't want my baby to grow up.' And I knew me growing up would mean us separating, and I didn't want that to happen, so I asked if there was a way that I could stop the boobies from coming in, and she told me, 'Well, there's a thing called calorie restriction.' "
McCurdy added that, "as disturbing as it is," she and her mother bonded by turning to a calorie restriction, viewing it as their personal secret.
"We were just in the disease, in the sickness. But there was a connection that the sickness created that I, of course, couldn't see at the time," she said.
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McCurdy explained that she also often felt conflicted because at home, her mother was encouraging weight loss and minimal eating while at work, she was portraying Sam Puckett on iCarly, a character obsessed with food.
"It was so confusing at the time. Being caught up in anorexia or binge-eating disorder or bulimia and then, while playing this character who's slinging a fried chicken leg and beating people with a ham sandwich," she said in the episode. "It felt like my life was mocking me in a lot of ways, and it was really difficult."
McCurdy has since revealed through her memoir, I'm Glad My Mom Died, that she was able to curb her eating disorders and make peace with her mother's death by going through two years of intensive Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT.
The Facebook Watch original series Red Table Talk returns with a premiere episode featuring Jennette McCurdy on Wednesday at 9 a.m. PT/12 p.m. ET. New episodes stream weekly.
If you or someone you know is battling an eating disorder, please contact the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) at 1-800-931-2237 or go to NationalEatingDisorders.org.
