Jessy Mendiola reveals past struggle with eating disorder

FILE: ” am far from perfect but this is who I am and this is how I love myself. I love myself enough to eat what I want to make myself feel good. I love myself enough to move everyday because I want to live my life as best as possible.” (Photo: @senorita_jessy/Instagram)

Twenty-six-year-old Kapamilya actress Jessy Mendiola opens up about both binge eating and bulimia and her struggles with the eating disorders in her latest social media post shared last Tuesday, March 5.

Despite Jessy being hailed as one of the country’s sexiest personality by FHM Magazine in 2016, she has also been criticized for her weight, taking a hiatus from showbusiness last December due to depression.

In the Instagram post accompanied by a series of photos, Jessy begins, “I only started taking my health seriously some time last year. It’s so hard to be in tip-top shape especially when a lot of people try to put you down and tell you how you’re supposed to look. Sometimes you’re too thin, sometimes too fat. I used to hate my thighs and arms. I would always kill myself at the gym just to achieve unrealistic body goals and starve myself just to reach my weight goal.”

She then elaborates, “I was usually weak and ‘lutang’ because I didn’t have enough nutrients in my body. This kept going until 2016 when I suddenly gained all the weight back and eventually hit my heaviest weight, 140lbs. Because of all the hate online, the struggle with myself kept going until 2017.”

In her words, “I was depressed and heartbroken at that time. I suffered from Bulimia and B.E.D (Binge Eating Disorder), desperate to lose weight in a short period of time. I starved myself just to lose unwanted weight… to look ‘perfect’ but I was so unhappy. I couldn’t live my life the way I wanted to.”

Jessy, now maintaining a 24-inch waistline due to proper dieting and exercise, shares that it turned around for her after meeting nutritionist Nadine Tencgo and fitness coach Kat Geronimo-Garcia. She also attests a lot of her strength to longterm boyfriend, television host Luis Manzano, describing, “ He made me feel better every time I felt so insecure about myself and he helped me recover from my depression and made me feel loved every single day.”

To conclude her post, Jessy tells her 4.1 million followers, “To whoever is reading this, accept yourself and work hard to be the best version of yourself. You do YOU.”