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.
“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 want 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 asked 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 “as disturbing as it is,” he and his mother grew closer when they turned to calorie restriction and considered it their personal secret.
“We are only in pain, in pain. But there was a connection created 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 encouraged weight loss at home and eating less at work. He played Sam Puckett in iCarly, a character obsessed with food.
“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 was able to overcome his eating disorder and accept his mother’s death by undergoing two years of intensive Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT).