Dancing With the Stars’ Sharna Burgess Reflects on Past Eating Disorder

Sharna Burgess has worked to overcome disordered eating struggles.

“I struggled with binging and restricting mostly,” Burgess, 40, said during a Sunday, January 18, Instagram Story Q&A when asked about her history with eating disorders. “I had a super complicated relationship with food as a teen and [in] my 20s.”

Without elaborating further, Burgess acknowledged that her habits “changed” once she  entered her 30s.

The Dancing With the Stars alum previously revealed that her body dysmorphia began during her dance training.

“I had a real struggle with my body because of dance,” Burgess told Australia’s Good Health & Wellbeing magazine in a 2021 interview. “I remember being 15 and put on the scale every two days by my teachers and we were told whether we needed to lose weight or not. Every week I was told that I needed to lose more weight — and I certainly wasn’t overweight.”

She continued, “While dance was something that I needed in my life, it definitely instilled a negative body image. It also started a negative pattern of eating whereby I’d binge one day, and then starve the next. I struggled with that throughout the years. Even in my 20s, I’d look in the mirror and see the 15-year-old that was told every week she needed to lose more weight.”

Burgess started to appreciate her physique after joining the cast of DWTS in 2011.

“It was seeing just how much the celebrities on the show transformed and ended up loving their bodies through being able to move and dance that really shook my perspective,” she explained. “I thought, ‘Wow, I’ve been doing this my whole life.’ I started to see something else in the mirror, I started to see a body that had gotten me through some incredibly difficult times, that had created some beautiful moments, that had won championships, that had landed me a life I never ever thought possible.”

Burgess last served as a DWTS pro during 2021’s season 30, where she danced with now-fiancé Brian Austin Green. She left the show in 2022 after the pair welcomed son Zane. (Green, 52, is also a father of four children from previous relationships.)

“After long conversations and lots of thinking and really trying to sit with what was right, I have made the really hard decision to not do the season this year of Dancing With the Stars,” Burgess said in an August 2022 social media video. “I was not ready to spend, at minimum, 10 hours a day away from Zane. I’m a full-time breast-feeding mama, and not only that, I am so in love with being a mom. As much as it was hard to say no to Dancing, I have this family and this newborn at home that I may never get these moments back [with].”

Burgess, however, hasn’t walked away from the ballroom for good.

“It’s never a no,” she said on Sunday, answering another Instagram Story question about a potential reality TV comeback. “I was supposed to do something with them last season , but I was already working on a play in NYC and couldn’t commit. I love [the cast and crew], the show and am always going to want to be there.”

If you or someone you know struggles with an eating disorder, visit the National Alliance for Eating Disorders website or call their hotline at (866) 662-1235. Text “ALLIANCE” to 741741 for free, 24/7 support.