VIDEO. Joyce Jonathan opens up about her past eating disorders

“I was obsessed with weight. I made lists of what I ate. I was very rarely in the present moment, especially at meal times. (…) At the restaurant, I went to the kitchen, I went to check that they weren’t using butter or oil. It was a degree of madness”. Singer Joyce Jonathan breaks the silence today and talks about her past eating behavior problems, encountered at the age of 22 and which lasted ten years. It all started with heartbreak. She then alternated between phases of bulimia, which “may or may not be emetic”, and phases of anorexia: “This translates into different forms. There is anorexia which consists of not eating. There is also anorexia nervosa, where we have a real problem of dysmorphophobia, where we have the impression of being fat or fat in front of the mirror”. At the time, the young woman didn’t talk about it.to no one, not even to (her) best friends”.

“I never told myself that it was an illness before I recovered from it”

Today, my mother is fulfilled and free of her “demon”, she explains that becoming aware of her illness was a big step forward in her recovery. “I think that maybe that’s the path to healing, is to accept that we are sick” says Joyce Jonathan. She confides that “the thing that really turned (her) life upside down was motherhood”: “I know this is not a way out. But my body disgusted me for ten years and when I got pregnant, it was the first time I was happy to gain weight. And above all, I realized that all of a sudden, the mother was no longer my mother. I became the mother of my life too. And I think it was this trigger that made me feel much more in my place and that all of a sudden I was living my own life.”.