Hilary Duff talks about the pressure to be thin when she was younger.
While we all remember Hilary Duff as the lovable Lizzie McGuire on her beloved Disney show, the actress opens up to Health magazine about her very real battle with her body image when she was a teenager.
The 27-year-old singer/actress recalls how she felt about the media attention she received when she first stepped out after giving birth to her son Luca, now 2. "There's too much pressure on women these days," she tells the publication.
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"The second I had Luca, I went to go get my hair blown out at the salon, and I hadn't stepped outside in, like, 15 days," she remembers. "I was learning how to be a new mom, and I needed to go get my hair done. Then they're like, 'Hilary Debuts Her Post-Baby Body!' I was like, I'm not debuting sh*t right now."
Duff says she felt everyone was hard on her because it took over a year to get her body back. "When I was 17, I weighed, like, 98 pounds. I was totally obsessed with everything I put in my mouth. I was way too skinny. Not cute," she confesses. "And my body wasn't that healthy -- my hands would cramp up a lot because I wasn't getting the nutrition I needed. That constant pressure of wanting something different than I had? I regret that."
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The actress doesn't want to go back to that state of mind.
"This is the body that I have," she says. "And I feel good about myself. But I feel like I'm always in a 5-pound battle, because being 5 feet 2, everything is going to show on me!"
As for her tips on staying healthy, Duff credits boxing to helping her get her body back in shape. "My neighbors would come outside, and it was funny because it sounds like gunshots—the pow-pow-pow of boxing," she quips.
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Back in September, Duff excited fans when she revealed that she would "love" to do a Lizzy McGuire reunion. Get all the details, below.