Sharna Burgess Reveals Eating Disorder Battle

At a Glance

• Sharna Burgess said she “struggled with binging and restricting” from her teens into her 20s
• The former Dancing with the Stars pro traced the issue to weekly weigh-ins at her dance school starting at age 15
• Joining DWTS in 2011 became the turning point that reshaped her body image
• Why it matters: Her story highlights how early, intense body scrutiny in performance arts can trigger lasting disordered eating

Sharna Burgess has publicly acknowledged the eating disorder she battled for more than a decade, telling followers that cycles of binging and food restriction dominated her teens and 20s before her perspective shifted in her 30s.

The confession came Sunday, Jan. 18, after the 40-year-old posted an Instagram Stories Q&A and a fan asked whether she had ever dealt with an eating disorder. “I struggled with binging and restricting mostly,” she wrote back. “I had a super complicated relationship with food as a teen and my 20s.”

While Burgess offered no additional medical details, she made clear that the pattern loosened once she entered her 30s and that her relationship with food “changed.”

Dance-School Pressure Started at 15

Burgess previously mapped the roots of her disordered eating to childhood dance training. In a 2021 interview with Australia’s Good Health & Wellbeing she recalled being placed on a scale every 48 hours and told whether she needed to drop weight.

“I remember being 15 and put on the scale every two days by my teachers,” she said. “Every week I was told that I needed to lose more weight-and I certainly wasn’t overweight.”

The constant audits, she said, planted deep body-dysmorphic thoughts. “While dance was something that I needed in my life, it definitely instilled a negative body image. It also started a negative pattern of eating whereby I’d binge one day, and then starve the next.”

That cycle persisted. “Even in my 20s, I’d look in the mirror and see the 15-year-old that was told every week she needed to lose more weight.”

DWTS Became the Turning Point

The shift arrived when Burgess joined Dancing with the Stars in 2011. Watching celebrity contestants learn to love their bodies through movement forced her to re-evaluate her own.

“It was seeing just how much the celebrities on the show transformed and ended up loving their bodies through being able to move and dance that really shook my perspective,” she told Good Health & Wellbeing.

She began, she said, to see “a body that had gotten me through some incredibly difficult times, that had created some beautiful moments, that had won championships, that had landed me a life I never ever thought possible.”

2011 therefore marks what Burgess calls her “first turning point” in shedding the ingrained negativity.

Anyone needing support can contact The Alliance for Eating Disorders helpline at 1-866-662-1235 or join free, therapist-led support groups.