Jameela Jamil says loneliness as a teenager "contributed" to her eating disorder.
The ‘Good Place’ star battled with anorexia and body dysmorphia at aged 14 when a class project required her to be weighed in front of her class, and has said feeling isolated made her eating disorder worse, because she had "no-one to turn to".
She said: "I was really unhappy and I think it contributed to my ability to have an eating disorder for so long, because there was no one kind of monitoring me and I had no one to turn to with my sadness and bad feelings, so I just had a really rough time as a teenager."
Jameela, 33, is now teaming up with Bumble BFF – the friend-finding side of the dating app – to encourage people to make friends.
She added: "I’ve had lots of experiences with loneliness myself, and I wish that I had an app like this when I was a teenager, so that I could have met other people who were also looking for friendship and companionship.
"I’m socially awkward, and there was no set up to help socially awkward people admit they were socially awkward and that they needed a little bit of a boost to find friends. And I love the idea of de-stigmatising the feeling of loneliness. Everyone gets lonely from time to time."
Now, the beauty says she’s learned to "suck it up" when it comes to her lacking social skills, and is thankful that she now has a supportive friend circle.
Speaking to People magazine, she said: "I’ve learned how to suck it up and make an effort and put myself on the line and ask people out for coffee. I’ve even officially asked people to be friends, just to make sure that everyone’s in agreement that there’s some sort of friendship forming. I started doing more things that I love and meeting more people via that, and I’ve found more people who had the same interests."
Jameela Jamil: Loneliness contributed to my eating disorder
