Actress/TV personality Ricki Lake has told how her lifelong weight battle began when her mother criticised her eating habits as a young girl.
The Hairspray actress' figure has fluctuated greatly throughout her career - she once ballooned to 260 pounds (118 kilograms) before dropping nearly half her body weight.
Now the newlywed star, who eloped with partner Christian Evans last Sunday (08Apr12), has put pen to paper to chronicle her love-hate relationship with food in upcoming memoir Never Say Never.
An excerpt of the tome, obtained by People.com, reads, "I've gone on crash diets. I've tried crazy exercise regimens. Once, while working on a film, I ate so little in my effort to appear skinny that I became anaemic and was forced to check into the hospital. The experience of measuring my own value inversely - the less the weight, the more I am worth - (is) one (I've repeated) throughout my life."
Lake believes her problems started at an early age when her homemaker mum Jill grew critical of her hefty appetite.
She recalls, "As I inched my way towards puberty, my mother became openly concerned about my weight. It came through in the bitter way she looked at me each time I reached for a cookie or second helping...
"Finally, my mother opened her own pinched mouth, seething - 'Do you really think you need that, Ricki?' - in the hopes that I'd learn to shut mine. When, after seeing Annie on Broadway, I told her I wanted desperately to audition, she quickly squashed my hopes, rolling her eyes and saying, 'You're not exactly the starving orphan type.'"
Lake is now feeling better than ever about her health after taking up exercise and shedding eight-and-a-half inches from her waist on reality TV competition Dancing With the Stars last year (11).