Demi Lovato painted a real picture of how she’s been celebrating her recovery from her eating disorder, and it included loads of gold glitter tracing her stretch marks.
The 28-year-old singer, who struggled with bulimia for years as a teenager, opened up about how she used to completely discredit real recovery from an eating disorder. But now, she’s grateful to be living proof of it with a never-before-seen series of glam shots she took of herself from the summer.
“I used to genuinely believe recovery from an eating disorder wasn’t real. That everyone was faking or secretly relapsing behind closed doors. ‘Surely she throws up here and there,’ ‘she can’t POSSIBLY accept her cellulite’… those were just a few of the things that I used to tell myself growing up,” she captioned the black swimsuit shots featured in her latest Instagram post.
She continued: “I’m so grateful that I can honestly say for the first time in my life – my dietitian looked at me and said ‘This is what eating disorder recovery looks like.’ In honor of my gratitude for the place I’m in today, this was a lil shoot I did by myself in quarantine this summer when I wanted to celebrate my stretch marks instead of being ashamed of them. I started wearing actual glitter paint on my stretch marks to celebrate my body and all of its features (whether society views them as good OR bad) My stretch marks aren’t going away so might as well throw a lil glitter on em’ amiright?”
The “I Love Me” singer reminded her 95 million Instagram followers who might’ve also believed eating disorder recovery isn’t real that “IT ACTUALLY IS. YOU CAN DO IT. I BELIEVE IN YOU. This year was tough.. be gentle on yourself if you slip up and remember to get right back on track because you’re WORTH THE MIRACLE OF RECOVERY. I LOVE YOU.”
She teased the end of her caption with a side note that the latter images didn’t feature the extra sparkly filter because “Instagram vs reality type sh– you kno?”
Lovato recently sang Lizzo’s praises for being an “inspiration” and “legend” after the “Good As Hell” singer posted a montage reel of video clips to her own Instagram, where Lizzo proudly showed off her naked body and narrated how she’s taking healthy steps to loving herself “in a society that gives us a head-start into self-loathing, that hands us a dysmorphic mirror and leaves us desperate to catch up with who we think we should be.”
In March of this year, the “OK Not to Be OK” singer opened up on Ellen about her 2018 relapse after six years of sobriety that stemmed from ongoing issues tied to her eating disorder. “It led me to being really, really unhappy; my bulimia got really bad and I asked for help. And I didn’t receive the help that I needed,” the pop star began her powerful message. “….I think it’s important that I sit here on this stage and tell you at home, or you in the audience, or you right here that if you do go through this, you yourself can get through it.”
