'Girls' Star Zosia Mamet Reveals Struggle With Eating Disorder That Nearly Killed Her
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The Shoshanna Shapiro of 'Girls' says, 'At times it has forced me to starve myself, to run extra miles, to abuse my body.'

AceShowbiz - Zosia Mamet, 26, opens up about eating disorder she has battled since she was a kid. The Shoshanna Shapiro depicter on "Girls" talked about her past struggle for the first time to public in her monthly column on Glamour for the magazine's September issue.

Calling herself "an addict in recovery," she said, "I've struggled with an eating disorder since I was a child. This struggle has been mostly a private one, a war nobody knew was raging inside me. I tried to fight it alone for a long time. And I nearly died."

"I was told I was fat for the first time when I was eight. I'm not fat; I've never been fat. But ever since then, there has been a monster in my brain that tells me I am - that convinces me my clothes don't fit or that I've eaten too much. At times it has forced me to starve myself, to run extra miles, to abuse my body," she added.

"As a teenager I used to stand in front of the refrigerator late at night staring into that white fluorescent light, debilitated by the war raging inside me: whether to give in to the pitted hunger in my stomach or close the door and go back to bed. I would stand there for hours, opening and closing the door, taking out a piece of food then putting it back in; taking it out, putting it in my mouth, and then spitting it into the garbage," she wrote. "I was only 17, living in misery, waiting to die."

Her father, famous playwright David Mamet, eventually helped her begin her treatment. "He came home one night from a party, took me by the shoulders, and said, 'You're not allowed to die,' " she remembered. "It was the first time I realized this wasn't all about me. I didn't care if I died, but my family did. That's the thing about these kinds of disorders: They're consuming; they make you egocentric; they're all you can see."

Zosia said she couldn't talk about "all of this without bringing up the world we live in." She explained, "Our culture delivers a real one-two punch: You want to control some�thing, and then society says, 'Hey, how about controlling the way you look? Skinny is beautiful' Your obsession feels justified. It's no secret that we live in a country with a warped view of beauty. 'Skinny' sells us everything, from vacations to underwear, effectively."

"Today I'm at a healthy weight, though I realize that my obsession will always be with me in some way," she went on. "For years the voice inside me has gotten louder or quieter at times. It may never disappear completely, but hopefully one day it'll be so quiet, it'll only be a whisper and I'll wonder, Was that just the wind?"

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