Hilaria Baldwin's obsession with dancing caused her to suffer from anorexia and bulimia.
Hilaria Baldwin
The 32-year-old star developed a passion for latin and ballroom dancing when she was a young girl but admits it had an affect on how she perceived her body.
She shared: "Without realising it, I started drifting away from the playful connection to movement I'd enjoyed as a young child and into a different and darker kind of dynamic: pushing my body to its limits and commanding it to perform through pain or fatigue. A long simmering struggle with anorexia and bulimia began to hold me firmly in its grip.
"By the time I was 20 years old, my 5-foot-3 frame was at least 20 lbs. under a healthy weight. My nails were brittle, my hair was falling out, my period was MIA, and my energy had tanked. I was miserable and desperate to feel better."
And when Hilaria - who has Carmen Gabriela, three, Rafael Thomas, 18 months, and Leonardo Ángel Charles, three months, with her husband Alec Baldwin - discovered yoga, she thought it would make things better but she still found herself pushing her body to the limit as she tried to become a yoga instructor and follow her dream of opening her own studio.
Writing in her book 'The Living Clearly Method', she added: "I wish I could say that it was smooth sailing from this point on, but sometimes things have to get a whole lot worse before they get better. Even while I was helping so many others, I still didn't listen to my body. Extraordinarily long days became my reality; skipping meals was par for the course."
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