Sharna Burgess has worked to beat disordered eating struggles.
“I struggled with binging and restricting mostly,” Burgess, 40, said during a Sunday, January 18, Instagram Story Q&A when asked about her history with eating disorders. “I had a brilliant complicated relationship with food as a teen and [in] my 20s.”
Without elaborating further, Burgess acknowledged that her habits “modified” once she entered her 30s.
The Dancing With the Stars alum previously revealed that her body dysmorphia began during her dance training.
“I had an actual struggle with my body due to dance,” Burgess told Australia’s Good Health & Wellbeing magazine in a 2021 interview. “I remember being 15 and placed on the dimensions every two days by my teachers and we were told whether we wanted to shed weight or not. Every week I used to be told that I needed to lose more weight — and I definitely wasn’t chubby.”
She continued, “While dance was something that I needed in my life, it definitely instilled a negative body image. It also began a negative pattern of eating whereby I’d binge in the future, after which starve the following. I struggled with that throughout the years. Even in my 20s, I’d look within the mirror and see the 15-year-old that was told every week she needed to lose more weight.”
Burgess began to understand her physique after joining the solid of DWTS in 2011.
“It was seeing just how much the celebrities on the show transformed and ended up loving their bodies through having the ability to move and dance that actually shook my perspective,” she explained. “I believed, ‘Wow, I’ve been doing this my whole life.’ I began to see something else within the mirror, I began to see a body that had gotten me through some incredibly difficult times, that had created some beautiful moments, that had won championships, that had landed me a life I never ever thought possible.”
Burgess last served as a DWTS pro during 2021’s season 30, where she danced with now-fiancé Brian Austin Green. She left the show in 2022 after the pair welcomed son Zane. (Green, 52, can be a father of 4 children from previous relationships.)
“After long conversations and a lot of considering and really trying to sit down with what was right, I even have made the really hard decision to not do the season this yr of Dancing With the Stars,” Burgess said in an August 2022 social media video. “I used to be not able to spend, at minimum, 10 hours a day away from Zane. I’m a full-time breast-feeding mama, and never only that, I’m so in love with being a mom. As much because it was hard to say no to Dancing, I even have this family and this newborn at home that I could never get these moments back [with].”
Burgess, nevertheless, hasn’t walked away from the ballroom for good.
“It’s never a no,” she said on Sunday, answering one other Instagram Story query a few potential reality TV comeback. “I used to be imagined to do something with them last season , but I used to be already working on a play in NYC and couldn’t commit. I really like [the cast and crew], the show and am all the time going to wish to be there.”
If you happen to or someone you understand struggles with an eating disorder, visit the National Alliance for Eating Disorders website or call their hotline at (866) 662-1235. Text “ALLIANCE” to 741741 without spending a dime, 24/7 support.