Sharna Burgess is using her platform as a fan favorite from “Dancing With the Stars” to talk candidly about the eating disorder that shadowed her rise in the ballroom world. The professional dancer has described a “super complicated” relationship with food that began in her teens and lingered into adulthood, shaped by weigh-ins, criticism and a relentless drive to be perfect. Her decision to revisit those years now offers a rare, detailed look at how a glamorous TV success story was built on private turmoil around body image and control.
By walking through the specifics of her binging and restricting, the pressures of Australia’s competitive dance scene and the turning points that helped her heal, Burgess is reframing her story from one of pure achievement to one of survival and growth. Her reflections also land at a moment when conversations about disordered eating in sport and entertainment are finally catching up to the realities performers have faced for decades.
Sharna Burgess steps forward with a painful chapter
Sharna Burgess, known to millions of viewers as a standout pro on “DWTS,” has chosen to publicly unpack the years when food and self-worth were tightly knotted together. In a recent conversation she described her history with disordered eating as a “super complicated relationship with food,” language that signals both the severity of what she endured and the nuance she now brings to it. Rather than offering a vague confession, she has laid out how patterns of binging one day and starving the next became a defining feature of her adolescence and young adulthood, long before the sequins and spotlights.
Her decision to speak now appears rooted in a desire to reach younger dancers who might be facing similar pressures, as well as to correct the illusion that professional success erases old wounds. Burgess has acknowledged that she “struggled with binging and restricting mostly,” a cycle that did not simply vanish once she joined the cast of DWTS. By naming the problem in such specific terms, she is challenging the sanitized narratives that often surround celebrity wellness and inviting a more honest discussion about what recovery actually looks like.
Teen years in Australia’s dance world and the roots of control
Burgess traces the origins of her eating disorder back to her teenage years in Australia, where she was immersed in a high-stakes dance culture that prized thinness as much as technique. Growing up in that environment, she recalls being evaluated not only on her lines and timing but on the number on the scale, a metric that quickly became a proxy for value. The message she absorbed was clear: to succeed, she had to shrink, and any deviation from that expectation was treated as a failure of discipline rather than a normal part of adolescence.
Those early experiences in Australia’s studios and competitions laid the groundwork for a mindset in which food became something to be tightly controlled rather than enjoyed. Reporting on Sharna Burgess notes that the constant scrutiny she faced as a teenager in that scene helped fuel a brutal pattern of disordered eating. The combination of public performance, private criticism and a body still developing created a perfect storm in which restrictive habits could take hold and feel, at least initially, like the only way to stay in control.
Weighed every two days at 15 and the descent into a “brutal” disorder
One of the most striking details Burgess has shared is how frequently her body was monitored when she was just 15. She recalls being weighed every two days, a schedule that turned the scale into a looming verdict on her worth and potential. For a teenager still forming her identity, that kind of relentless measurement can be devastating, and Burgess has been clear that it did not simply encourage healthy habits, it pushed her toward extremes. The expectation that her weight should always trend downward, or at least never rise, left little room for normal fluctuations or self-compassion.
According to coverage of Sharna Burgess and her Body, Image Issue, she has linked those weigh-ins directly to what she calls a “brutal” eating disorder. The ritual of stepping on the scale every other day did not just track her progress, it reinforced the idea that any deviation from a narrow target was unacceptable. Over time, that pressure translated into increasingly severe restriction, followed by episodes of binging when the strain became too much, a pattern that would follow her well beyond her teenage years.
Binging, restricting and the long shadow into her 20s
Burgess has been unflinching in describing the specific behaviors that defined her disordered eating, explaining that she “struggled with binging and restricting mostly.” She has said she would binge one day and then starve the next, a pendulum swing that left her physically depleted and emotionally exhausted. This was not a brief phase confined to high school; she has emphasized that she “struggled with that throughout the years,” suggesting a chronic pattern rather than an isolated episode. The alternating extremes became a familiar rhythm, one that felt punishing but also, in a distorted way, safe because it was known.
Even as she moved into her 20s and her career expanded, Burgess has said that the image she saw in the mirror was still shaped by those early criticisms. She has recalled that “Even in my 20s, I’d look in the mirror and see the 15-year-old that was told every week” that her body was not good enough, a memory that continued to dictate how she ate and how she felt about herself. In a social media reflection shared by Jan, she described how those patterns persisted even after joining DWTS in 2011, underscoring how deeply entrenched the disorder had become by the time the public came to know her.
Carrying the struggle into the DWTS spotlight
By the time Burgess joined “DWTS” back in 2011, she had already spent years locked in a cycle of binging and restriction, yet to viewers she appeared as the picture of strength and control. The show’s glamorous costumes and intense rehearsal schedules only heightened the focus on her physique, but the audience saw the polished performances, not the private negotiations over every meal. Burgess has indicated that the transition to American television did not magically resolve her issues with food; instead, the stakes felt even higher, with millions of people now watching her body from every angle.
Reports on DWTS note that Burgess continued to wrestle with disordered eating even as her profile on the show grew. She has spoken about how the same perfectionism that drove her to excel in choreography also fueled her harsh self-judgment around food. The ballroom became both a stage for her talent and a place where old insecurities were constantly triggered, especially when costumes were fitted or routines demanded revealing outfits that left little room to hide.
“Super complicated” relationship with food and the language of recovery
When Burgess describes her history as a “super complicated relationship with food,” she is signaling that recovery has not been a simple before-and-after story. That phrase captures the way food functioned simultaneously as fuel for her art, a source of comfort and a battleground for control. She has acknowledged that even as she began to recognize the harm in her patterns, letting go of them felt risky, as if loosening her grip might jeopardize the discipline that had carried her career. The complexity she names is emotional as much as physical, rooted in years of equating thinness with worthiness.
Coverage of her recent comments highlights how she has gradually shifted that relationship, particularly as she moved into her 30s and began to prioritize health over appearance. In one account, Burgess, now 40, is quoted reflecting on how long it took to untangle those beliefs and build a more compassionate approach to eating. A post shared by Sharna Burgess notes that Burgess has worked to overcome disordered eating struggles and explicitly cites her age as 40, a reminder of how long this process has been unfolding. Her willingness to use nuanced language, rather than declaring herself simply “fixed,” offers a more realistic picture of what healing can entail.
Seeing a 15-year-old in the mirror and the turning point
One of the most haunting images Burgess has shared is the idea that, well into her 20s, she would look in the mirror and still see the 15-year-old who had been weighed and criticized every week. That lingering self-image shows how deeply early comments from coaches and authority figures can burrow into a young performer’s psyche. Even as her actual body changed, the mental snapshot remained frozen at the moment when she first internalized the belief that she was not enough, a belief that continued to drive her toward punishing behaviors around food and exercise.
She has also spoken about a turning point when she began to challenge that internalized voice and question whether the standards she had been chasing were truly hers. In an interview highlighted by Jan, Burgess described a moment that she called her first turning point, when she realized that the cost of maintaining her disordered patterns was too high. That realization did not instantly erase the old mirror image, but it marked the beginning of a gradual shift toward seeing herself as more than the teenager who had been reduced to a number on a scale.
Speaking out now, for herself and for other dancers
Burgess’s decision to revisit these experiences publicly at this stage of her life appears to be driven by both personal closure and a sense of responsibility to others. Having reached a place where her relationship with food is more stable, she can look back with enough distance to analyze what went wrong and how it might have been prevented. By sharing the specifics of being weighed every two days and cycling between binging and starvation, she is offering a cautionary tale to dance schools, parents and young performers who might otherwise accept such practices as normal.
Her openness also aligns with a broader cultural shift in which athletes and entertainers are increasingly candid about mental health and body image. Coverage of Burgess notes that she has previously been open about her struggles with eating disorders, but the level of detail she is providing now adds new urgency to the conversation. By framing her story not as a confession but as a call for change, she is helping to normalize discussions of disordered eating in spaces that have long prioritized performance over well-being.
Why Sharna Burgess’s story matters beyond DWTS
Although Burgess’s journey is rooted in the specific world of competitive dance and “DWTS,” the dynamics she describes will be familiar to anyone who has navigated appearance-based industries or high-pressure sports. The combination of frequent weigh-ins, public scrutiny and perfectionist standards is not unique to ballroom, and her account underscores how easily those conditions can tip into pathology. By naming the exact behaviors she engaged in and the age at which they began, she is providing a concrete example of how disordered eating can develop and persist, rather than leaving it as an abstract concept.
Her story has also drawn attention because of how starkly it contrasts with the confident persona viewers saw on television. In a detailed profile of Alum Sharna Burgess on Her Past, Super Complicated Relationship With Food, By Miranda Siwak, the reporting notes that her struggles began during her dance training, long before she lit up the DWTS ballroom. Other coverage, including a piece by Nicki Gostin and a follow-up on DWTS alum Sharna Burgess details, have amplified her message, helping it reach beyond the show’s fan base. Together, these accounts position Burgess not just as a dancer who survived an eating disorder, but as a prominent voice urging her industry to rethink how it treats young bodies and the people who inhabit them.
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