Tallulah Willis took to Instagram to share an update on her progress as she recovers from an eating disorder.
The 29-year-old daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore posted before-and-after photos to show the changes to her body, and began her caption with a trigger warning.
“~TW: ED pre-recovery image~I love her. And I love her, and I see how courageous she’s been. steady on the course my bbs,” Willis wrote, along with an emoji of a sun and the hashtags #edrecovery and #iloveme.
DEMI MOORE DEFENDS YOUNGEST DAUGHTER TALLULAH WILLIS AMID BODY-SHAMING
Tallulah Willis shared before and after photos as she celebrates the progress she has made recovering from an eating disorder. (Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for GQ)
Willis began her slideshow with the older “pre-recovery image” of her body and followed up with a screenshot of a group chat in which she was seen in a more recent photo.
“Look at my healthy body!!!!” the fashion designer wrote underneath the image that she sent to the chat.
“You are beautiful,” Willis’ sister Rumer, 31, replied in a text that was seen in the screenshot.
“Looking strong and gorgina!” read another text that was in the group chat.
Willis concluded her post with a photo of a colorful fruit platter that included grapes, melons and plums.
The former child actress opened up about her battle with an eating disorder and her recovery in an essay that she penned for Vogue in May.
“For the last four years, I have suffered from anorexia nervosa, which I’ve been reluctant to talk about because, after getting sober at age 20, restricting food has felt like the last vice that I got to hold on to,” Willis revealed.
She continued, “When I was 25, I was admitted to a residential treatment facility in Malibu to address the depression that I had lived with through my adolescence. It was a largely therapeutic experience; for the first time, I grieved the 15-year-old misfit me, the ugly duckling.”
Willis shared that she had also been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and began taking stimulant medication, which she described as “transformative.”
Willis (pictured in February 2023) revealed in May that she had battled an eating disorder for four years before getting treatment in June 2022. (Gregg DeGuire/WireImage)
“I felt smart for the first time, but I also started to enjoy the appetite-suppressant side effect of the meds,” she wrote. “I saw a way to banish the awkward adolescent in favor of a flighty little pixie.”
“And like so many people with eating disorders, my sense of myself went haywire,” Willis added. “There’s an unhealthy deliciousness at the beginning of losing weight rapidly.”
“People are like, ‘Oh wow!’ And then quickly it turns to, ‘Are you okay?’ My friends and family were terrified, and I dismissed it. They’d say, ‘Is this the ADHD medication?’”
Willis explained that she was “very protective” of her stimulant medication and “rationalized” continuing to take it since it enabled her to “focus.”
The fashion designer recalled that she was consumed with body dysmorphia at the time, which she said she “flaunted on Instagram.”
Willis revealed that her weight had dropped to about 84 pounds by the spring of 2022.
Willis is the youngest daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore. (Stefanie Keenan)
“I was always freezing,” she remembered. “I was calling mobile IV teams to come to my house, and I couldn’t walk in my Los Angeles neighborhood because I was afraid of not having a place to sit down and catch my breath.”
After Willis’ former fiancé Dillon Buss “dumped” her in June 2021, she said that her family sent her to Driftwood Recovery, a rehabilitation center in Texas. During her stay at Driftwood, Willis wrote that she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.
“By the time I left Texas, in October, I felt a lot better,” Willis recalled.
She continued, “I realized that what I wanted more than harmony with my body was harmony with my family—to no longer worry them, to bring a levity to my sisters and my parents.”
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“An emaciated body wouldn’t do that. I had felt the weight of people worrying about me for years, and that put me on my knees.”
In her essay, Willis wrote that she is now focused on being “present” for her father, who was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia in February. (Getty Images)
Earlier in her essay, Willis admitted that she had been “too sick myself to handle” her father’s health struggles. In February, Bruce was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) after initially receiving a diagnosis of aphasia in 2022.
Now that her own health has improved, Willis wrote that she was able to focus on spending time with her father.
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“Recovery is probably lifelong, but I now have the tools to be present in all facets of my life, and especially in my relationship with my dad,” she said.
Willis continued, “I can bring him an energy that’s bright and sunny, no matter where I’ve been. In the past I was so afraid of being destroyed by sadness, but finally I feel that I can show up and be relied upon.”
“I can savor that time, hold my dad’s hand, and feel that it’s wonderful. I know that trials are looming, that this is the beginning of grief, but that whole thing about loving yourself before you can love somebody else—it’s real.”
