Demi Lovato Struggled With Feeling 'Controlled' During Recovery From Her Eating Disorder

Trigger warning: This article contains a discussion about consuming food disorders.


Demi Lovato's recent return to the spotlight has also included some very candid discussions about the mental health struggles she’s navigated over the years, including her consuming food disorder.


Ahead of releasing her new single "I Love Me," the singer appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on Thursday (March 5). She opened up about the track’s positive message, and further intricate how she started to believe it herself. It wasn’t an one-and-done listening session that convinced her, though: The song came to her immediately after a contentious few months with her old team, she said.


DeGeneres admitted she had only just learned while in the show that Lovato had previously worked with a team who would join her to Ellen's show and essentially sweep the area, allegedly without Lovato's knowledge.


"There was a team that used to stage name everything before you got here," Ellen mentioned. "They were told to hide all the sugar and put everything away so that while you got to your dressing room, even backstage, there was no sugar anywhere near. Did you realize that was happening?"


Lovato apparently did not.


“But I lived a life for the past six years that I felt like wasn’t my own," she explained. "Because I struggled really hard with a consuming food disorder, yes, and that was my primary problem and then it turned into other things, yet my life, I just felt was — I hate to use this word, yet I felt like it was controlled by so several people around me."


She went on to detail the ways in which fruit could be removed from her hotel room, or how someone might take the phone out to remove her ability to call for room service. (It’s not clear who grouped or executed this, or why.) Right now, although, she's recruited a new team that she feels has "supported her journey."


"This year, If I turned 27 — I have a new team — Scooter Braun, my boss, gave me the perfect birthday cake and I spent it with Ariana Grande, who is one of my good companions, and we just had the ideal birthday," she mentioned. She finally had the possibility to eat cake, not just "watermelon cake" topped with fat-free whipped cream, which she had on her birthday "for several years."


"I think at some point it becomes dangerous attempt to control someone’s food any time they’re in recovery from a consuming food disorder," Lovato mentioned of her experience.


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