Yahoo Lifestyle Demi Moore Recalls Riding Her Bike 60 Miles a Day to Lose Weight: 'I Put So Much Pressure on Myself'
"Did it really matter that much? Probably not, but at the time I made it mean everything,” the 61-year-old actress said of her body image
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Demi Moore reveals she biked 60 miles every day to lose weight following her second pregnancy
The actress admits that she used to put too much pressure on herself but has since learned how to manage her body image
The topics of body image and “self-judgment” are highlighted in her new film The Substance
Demi Moore is reflecting on her past negative body image and sharing some of the unhealthy habits she relied on to lose weight.
The 61-year-old actress appeared on a Sept. 22 segment of CBS Sunday Morning and talked about the “crazy” things she did to her body to submit to beauty standards at the time.
“I put so much pressure on myself,” she told host Tracy Smith. “And I did have experiences of being told to lose weight and all of those, while they may have been embarrassing and humiliating, it’s what I did to myself because of that.”
Moore revealed that she began shooting Indecent Proposal shortly after her daughter Scout Willis was born in 1991. To lose the pregnancy weight, she would ride a bike to and from work every day — about 60 miles.
“I think [Scout] was, like, five or six months old when we were shooting,” she explained. “I was feeding her through the night, getting up in the dark with a trainer with a headlamp, biking all the way to Paramount, even on location where we were shooting, then shooting a full day which is usually a 12-hour day and then starting all over again.”
Related: Demi Moore Opens Up About Her Recovery: 'I Was Spiraling Down a Path of Real Self-Destruction'
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“Even just the idea of what I did to my body it’s like so crazy, so ridiculous,” she continued. “But you look back and you kind of go, ‘Did it really matter that much?’ Probably not but at the time I made it mean everything.”
Moore added that today, her self-image “fluctuates” but she’s in a much better mental place.
“Some days I look and I’m like, ‘Wow that’s pretty good,’ and some days I catch myself dissecting, hyperfocusing on things that I don’t like,” she said. “The difference is now, I can catch myself. I can go, ‘Yepp, I don’t like that loose skin but you know, it is what it is. So I'm going to make the best of what is as opposed to chasing what isn’t.’”
Earlier this month during an interview with The Guardian, Moore got candid about body image and the "self-judgment" explored in her new film The Substance.
Addressing expectations for women's bodies in the '90s, the actress said that women were not considered attractive unless they were thin at the time. “What I did to myself,” she told the outlet. “What I made it mean about me. Really looking at that violence, how violent we can be towards ourselves, how just brutal.”
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“Self-judgment, chasing perfection, trying to rid ourselves of ‘flaws’, also feeling rejected and despair, none of this is exclusive to women," Moore continued, before referencing a scene in the film where her character, Elisabeth Sparkle, looks for her flaws in the mirror before a date.
“We’ve all had moments where you go back and you’re trying to fix something, and you’re just making it worse to the point where you’re incapacitated," she explained. "We’re seeing these small things nobody else is looking at, but we’re so hyper-focused on all that we’re not. All of us, if we start to think our value is only with how we look then ultimately we’re going to be crushed.”
Moore then elaborated that “we are living at a time of great judgment," where "people can anonymously judge one another in cruel ways."
"I feel [this kind of judgment] is a reflection of someone’s own unhappiness and/or a way to boost their own sense of self," she said at the time. "When those things happen, I have learned to just let it roll. It’s what I make it mean about me. If I give it a lot of weight and value and power, it will have it. If I don’t, it won’t.”
The Substance follows Moore's character Elisabeth as she tries a black market drug to create a younger version of herself. Directed by Coralie Fargeat, the movie — which also stars Margaret Qualley — explores topics including body image and societal expectations for women and aging. It won the best screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival in May.
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