Demi Moore used to cycle 60 miles a day to lose weight. Here's why she gave up ‘hard exercise’
Demi Moore is getting tons of buzz for her new movie The Substance, where she plays a famous aerobics instructor who's fired on her 50th birthday. She's offered a substance that transforms her into an enhanced version of herself, and things get seriously wild from there.
While promoting her movie, the 61-year-old is opening up about her own approach to wellness, sharing that, at times, she didn’t approach fitness in the healthiest way. Here’s what she’s shared.
Demi felt ‘pressure’ to lose weight postpartum
Demi, a mum of three, filmed her iconic 1993 movie Indecent Proposal after having her second daughter, Scout. But the process wasn't easy: Demi was stressed about losing weight postpartum and pushed herself too hard.
'I put so much pressure on myself,' she told CBS Sunday Morning on September 22. 'I did have experiences of being told to lose weight. And all of those, while they may have been embarrassing and humiliating, it’s what I did to myself because of that.'
Scout was five or six months old when Demi was shooting Indecent Proposal, she said. 'So, I was feeding her through the night, getting up in the dark with a trainer, with a headlamp, biking all the way to Paramount, wherever, even on location where we were shooting; then shooting a full day, which is usually a 12-hour day; and then starting all over again,' she said, noting that this would sometimes equate to 60 miles of biking a day. 'Even just the idea of, like, what I did to my body, it’s, like, so crazy, so ridiculous.'
Now, Demi said she’s not thrilled she did that. 'You look back and you kinda go, "Did it really matter that much?" Probably not,' she said. 'But at the time, I made it mean everything.'
What is Demi Moore’s exercise routine?
Demi has shared little snippets here and there of her workout routine, including doing exercises with the help of the Mirror (now known as lululemon Studio).
But in the 90s, Demi developed an 'obsession' over her appearance for movies. It began with her 1992 film A Few Good Men, where she played a naval lawyer.
'I didn’t feel like I could stop exercising,' Demi wrote in her 2019 memoir Inside Out. 'It was my job to fit into that unforgiving military uniform I’d be wearing in two months in A Few Good Men. Getting in shape for that movie launched the obsession with working out that would consume me.'
After five years, Demi decided to ease up on working out regularly.
'I added into my daily prayer a new mantra: to have the courage to be seen without padding or protection. I couldn’t go on fighting my body and my weight; I had to make peace,' she added. 'I started by giving up hard exercise. I never went back into the gym in the house. Never. The room it occupied is now my office.'
She gave up the gym after filming G.I. Jane
After shooting 1997's G.I. Jane, Demi broke her pattern of disordered exercise. She was 'bulking up enormously' for her role as a military officer; after filming was done, she weighed more than her usual, but she decided she had enough.
'My usual reaction would have been to start starving myself again, to begin an exercise regime designed to reduce the bulk, but I did neither. I had reached my limit,' she wrote in her memoir. 'When I got home to Idaho, I had an epiphany in the shower one day: I just need to be my natural size.'
In September, Demi said she 'really experienced the gift of surrender.'
'I was so kind of worn down in this battle that I had been in that I finally surrendered,' she told The New York Times. 'I just started to ask to be my natural size because I didn’t know what it was. I literally couldn’t go in a gym. I couldn’t control food in that way.'
Now, she’s more focused on self-confidence
Demi joked with the Times that faking it until she makes it is 'my primary university'. Now, she feels 'emotionally sober'.
'What it is to be emotionally sober means how I’m choosing to live my life, the quality of how I interact with people, my ability to show up for others,' she said. 'That’s all within my emotional sobriety... I can go into a room; a gathering, and if I’m uncomfortable, I don’t need to try to take the edge off it. I can actually just go: "Oh, wow. Isn’t that interesting? I’m a little uncomfortable right now."'
Read now: How to practise self-compassion and become more confident
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