‘It made me starve a bit’ — Taylor Swift opens up on past struggle with eating disorder

Taylor Swift, an American songwriter, has opened up on her previous struggle with an eating disorder that made her resort to starving herself to achieve an ideal physique.

The 30-year-old vocalist spoke with Variety on her relationship with food — ahead of the January 31 release date for ‘Miss Americana’, her forthcoming documentary.

While admitting that she did lots of exercising after many had expressed displeasure about her seemingly protracted tummy, Swift said she sometimes just “starved a bit.”

“It’s not good for me to see pictures of myself every day. It’s only happened a few times, and I’m not in any way proud of it. I’ll see a picture of me where I feel I looked like my tummy was too big,” she said.

“Or someone said that I looked pregnant… and that’ll just trigger me to just starve a little bit — just stop eating. My relationship with food was exactly the same psychology that I applied to everything”

The award winning songster also talked about the hateful messages she had received following the snaps, while some people had claimed she looked pregnant.

“I remember how, when I was 18, that was the first time I was on the cover of a magazine,” she said.

“And the headline was like ‘Pregnant at 18?’ And it was because I had worn something that made my lower stomach look not flat. So I just registered that as a punishment.

“And then I’d walk into a photoshoot and be in the dressing room and somebody who worked at a magazine would say ‘Oh, wow, this is so amazing that you can fit into the sample sizes. Usually we have to make alterations to the dresses, but we can take them right off the runway and put them on you!’

“And I looked at that as a pat on the head. You register that enough times, and you just start to accommodate everything towards praise and punishment, including your own body.

“I think I’ve never really wanted to talk about that before, and I’m pretty uncomfortable talking about it now.

“But in the context of every other thing that I was doing or not doing in my life, I think it makes sense [to have it in the film].”

Swift had recently spoken about being “heartbroken” after Andrea Swift, her mother, was diagnosed with a brain tumour while still undergoing treatment for cancer.

This was after she had narrated how she grappled with “the toxicity” that accompanies the “undue privilege” bestowed on male stakeholders in the music amid fierce criticism from her rivals.