The daughter of playwright David Mamet, Zosia Mamet, has revealed that she has secretly suffered from an eating disorder from a young age.
She opened up about her silent struggle in her column for Glamour. "I've struggled with an eating disorder since I was a child," Mamet wrote. "The struggle has been mostly private one, a war nobody knew was raging inside me."
The 26-year-old Girls star says that she sees herself as an "addict in recovery" and that she developed the disorder when she was about 8 years old and started believing she was fat. "I'm not fat; I've never been fat. but ever since then there has been a monster inside my brain that tells me I am."
According to People, Mamet notes that part of the issue was due to societal pressures to stay thin. "Our culture delivers a real one-two punch: You want to control something, and then society says, 'Hey, how about controlling the way you look? Skinny is beautiful.'"
Mamet says she would go on extra long runs, try to keep from eating and then at night would find herself fighting a battle within while in front of the refrigerator over whether to feed the hunger or go to sleep. "I was only 17, living in misery, waiting to die."
Her father was able to convince her to get help for the disorder, telling her she was "not allowed to die." She admits that while she didn't care about living, she became aware her family did.
Treatment didn't really help, saying the focus was less on the mental and more on "numbers and food," so that when she was released from treatment, Mamet quickly lost all she had gained.
Mamet concludes that she will always struggle with her disorder and that it will always be there more or less, but she has realized she's at a healthy weight and letting others know when you're struggling is a good first step. "Please know you're not alone."
image courtesy of Walter McBride/INFphoto.com