On Wednesday’s Red Table Talk, Janet McCurdy opened up about the years of malnutrition instilled in her abusive mother, Debbie, who died of cancer in 2013.
Janet McCurdy talks about her eating disorder years, which she learned from her mother.
In Wednesday’s episode of Red Table Talk on Facebook Watch, McCurdy, 30. Reflected on his childhood fame on Nickelodeon’s iCarly and how he struggled through years with eating disorders, including anorexia, binge eating, and bulimia.
The former actress admitted her late mother, Debra McCurdy, introduced her to an unhealthy relationship with food and revealed to hosts Jada Pinkett Smith. Willow Smith and Adrienne Banfield Norris that her mother physically and mentally abused her before she died in 2013 dying of breast cancer. . cancer
“My heart goes out to everyone involved. It’s unfortunate, but my mom taught me about anorexia. She taught me calorie restriction when I was 11 years old,” McCurdy said on the show. “I felt a lump in my breast, which I was like, ‘Oh, my mom has cancer, so I might get cancer.’ And she said, ‘No, Nate, it’s just boobs. And I said: “Okay, can I stop the boobs? I don’t want boobs.” And I know that my mom really wants me to stay young. She really explained to me,” she continued. “She was sobbing and hugged me really tight and said, ‘I don’t need my baby to grow up. And I knew growing up meant we were going to break up. And I didn’t want that to happen, so I ask if there was a way to prevent the boobs from coming in and he said, ‘Well. There’s something. called calorie restriction.’ “
McCurdy added that “disturbingly as it is,” he and his mother are getting closer to turning to calorie restriction and taking it as his personal secret.
“We are only in pain, in pain. But there was a connection create by the disease, which of course I couldn’t see at the time,” he said. McCurdy explained that he often felt conflicted because his mother pushed for weight loss at home and eating less at work. He played Sam Puckett in iCarly, food obsessed character.
“It was very confusing at the time. Getting caught with anorexia or binge eating disorder or bulimia and then playing this character. Who throws fried chicken legs and hits people with ham sandwiches,” he said in the episode. “It felt like life was playing tricks on me in a lot of ways, and it was really hard.”
McCurdy has since revealed in his memoir Glad My Mother Died. That he overcame his eating disorder and accepted his mother’s death by undergoing two years of intensive Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT).