Former child star Jennette McCurdy is sharing more about her experience with eating disorders, and the role her late mother played in nurturing them.
Appearing on the podcast Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown, McCurdy, now 29, opened up to the Call Me Kat actress and her co-host Jonathan Cohen about her mother — who died in 2013 after a 17-year battle with breast cancer — encouraged her to start restricting her calories at age 11. The then-preteen McCurdy was alarmed to have her chest growing, at which point her mom suggested dieting as a way to keep her breasts from getting larger.
“My mom was the person that introduced me to anorexia, actually,” McCurdy shared. “I had a lump in my breast, which was my boob developing, and I was scared that it was cancer because of my mom’s cancer. I thought, Well, she got cancer, now I’ve got cancer, I’ve got breast cancer at 11. Like, I’m doomed.
