Lily Allen shares mental health struggles and admits its impacted her eating
Watch: Lily Allen admits to having issues with eating
Lily Allen has shared that she is going through some mental health struggles, which have caused her to lose her appetite and stop eating.
Speaking on the most recent episode of her BBC Sounds podcast, Miss Me? the singer discussed a number of subjects related to therapy with her longtime friend Miquita Oliver and admitted that she had been "going through a tough time over the last few months", which had affected her eating.
"My eating has become a real issue," the mum-of-three explained. "My therapist and I talk about it and she says, 'How long has this been going on?' And I said, 'Well, about three years really.' And she's like, 'OK, why haven't you mentioned it before?' And it's not because I'm lying about it. It's just because it's not seemed at the top of the list of important things that I need to talk about, but obviously it is."
Allen went on to say she believes she lacks the skills to talk about the "bigger picture", and believes that it may have something to do with living with ADHD as her brain doesn't link things to do with her mind and body together.
The Smile singer revealed her ADHD diagnosis, defined as a neurodevelopmental disorder which affects a person's behaviour, last year.
"My body and my brain are two very separate things to me," she told Oliver. "I know a lot of people feel those two things are very connected to each other, but for me it's very different. I spend a lot of time in my head, and not a lot of time thinking about my body."
While she didn't open up about what was impacting her mental wellbeing, Allen, later reiterated how she had been struggling emotionally recently.
"I'm really not in a great place mentally at the moment, and I'm not eating," she continued. "But I'm not hungry. I obviously am hungry, but my body and brain are so disconnected from each other that my body... the messages of hunger are not going through my body to my brain."
Allen made clear she is not "avoiding" food but often doesn’t think about eating due her mind being elsewhere with other concerns. "I'm just not thinking about it because I'm so in my head. My body's, like, a few steps behind me," she added.
The Dreamland actor now lives in New York with her husband, Stranger Things star David Harbour, who she married in 2020 in a low-key Las Vegas wedding and her two children, Ethel and Marnie (from her previous marriage to Sam Cooper).
She has Allen has previously opened up about coping with an eating disorder. "I was gearing up to do promo for the second album," she told Cosmopolitan. "That’s when I started not eating, when I started thinking about having to do photo shoots and red carpets."
Allen added that when she “was feeling really bad” everything she ate “would come back up”.
The singer turned actor has also previously been open about her struggles with addiction in the past, having now been sober for five years, which has given her a new perspective on life. "I certainly look at things that I’ve done and I go, ‘God, that’s cringe,’ or, ‘I wish I hadn’t behaved like that on that night'," she told Glamour.
"But it’s not really about singular events, it’s more about how it made me feel in general about myself. Sometimes, I look back and I see pictures of myself in a certain period of time and I’ll think, ‘God, I remember looking at the mirror at that time, thinking I looked completely different, and I clearly looked ill, sad and unhealthy.’ You couldn’t have told me that I was those things at that time because I was just numbing it all."
Where to go for help
For support, contact eating disorder charity Beat's helplines, which are open 365 days a year from 1pm–9pm during the week, and 5pm–9pm on weekends and bank holidays, or via its one-to-one web chat.
You can also contact Mind for information and support on 0300 123 3393 or email the charity at info@mind.org.uk.
Read more about mental health and eating disorders:
Heartstopper praised for 'respectful' portrayal of eating disorders (Yahoo Life UK, 5-min read)
'I always loved Christmas, but my eating disorder robbed me of its joy' (Women's Health, 10-min read)
'How I navigate my eating disorder as a mother at Christmas' (Yahoo Life UK, 9-min read)
