Emily Atack felt like a "nine-year-old kid" in the ‘I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!’ camp.
The 29-year-old actress felt "complete contentment" with herself and her life during her stint on the show last year but knew it would be unrealistic to expect to continue to feel as happy all the time when she returned home.
She said: "It’s unrealistic to think you can do something like the jungle, and then keep up that feeling of complete contentment that you get when you’ve detoxed like that.
"There’s none of the stresses of life getting to you, you’re stripped bare – you’re a nine-year-old kid again in there!
"And that’s not a realistic portrayal of life – you can’t go through life being that happy with a unicorn up your arse all the time."
The former ‘Inbetweeners’ star still has days where she feels "insecure" or bad about herself but has learned to understand they won’t last.
She added to heat magazine: "I still have bad days where I feel insecure about my body or about the fact that I’m not as healthy as I was in the jungle – I’ve put on a stone since – and that’s always difficult.
"If I do feel a bit s**t about something, I just remind myself that I can pull myself out of it."
Emily is delighted to have retained contact with her campmates but wishes she saw some of them more often.
She said: "We’ve got a WhatsApp group. We always do our best to keep in contact and send each other pictures and videos.
"[Noel Edmonds] is brilliant. He sent me a video the other day because I said to him, ‘Noel, I thought I saw you in a pub.’ And he sent me a video going, ‘Ooh I’m right behind you Emily’ because he was in a pub too.
"I was gutted he wasn’t actually behind me."
Emily Atack felt like a kid in the jungle
