Demi Lovato gained some weight before her It’s Not That Deep Tour and feared people would criticize her appearance online. She felt scared enough to question going onstage, but performed anyway.
“You know, they still loved me and cried tears of joy when I sang for them,” she said.
Lovato says acceptance is where she’s landed in her eating disorder recovery, even as she expects her relationship with food to remain a lifelong challenge.
Speaking with Kerry Washington on the Street You Grew Up On podcast, the 34-year-old said being “fully healed” doesn’t feel like a realistic goal for her.
“Some days I don’t love my body, but there are days where I accept it,” Lovato said. “I would say I live in a place of acceptance now where I don’t look in the mirror and berate myself for having, you know, curves.”
Performing on the tour became part of that recovery.
Lovato traced her struggles with food to around age 8, when her younger sister, Madison De La Garza, was born. She said she wasn’t blaming anyone, but remembered struggling with no longer being the youngest child receiving that attention. She began binge eating and overeating, recalling baking cookies and eating the entire batch herself.
Her mother, Dianna De La Garza, also experienced an eating disorder. As a teenager, Lovato began to understand what her mother was going through.
“I emulated some of what I saw, and that’s when I developed anorexia. And from there it turned into bulimia, and it wasn’t until I was 18 that I sought treatment for it,” she said.
Lovato described the tour as a lesson in separating her worth from her appearance.
“My worth isn’t in my body. My husband doesn’t love me because of my body. My family doesn’t love me because of my body.”
She said being “a good human” is what matters most to her: “So, I’ve learned a lot, and I’m really proud of how far I’ve come in that and my journey with my eating disorder recovery.”
