Tracey Gold says she told “Growing Pains” writers fat jokes about her character were 'hurting my feelings'

Tracey Gold is looking back on some of her tougher times on the set of Growing Pains.

Gold explained Monday how the show's writing hurt her to the point that she suffered from eating disorders, including anorexia. Gold made the comments as she guest hosted the Let's Be Clear with Shannen Doherty podcast, formerly helmed by the Beverly Hills, 90210 star, who died of breast cancer in July.

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Gold played Carol Seaver, the teenage daughter of the late Alan Thicke's Dr. Jason Seaver and his wife, Maggie (Joanna Kerns) in the popular family sitcom that aired from 1985 to 1992. Her brothers Mike and Ben were played by Kirk Cameron, who was at that time the subject of many a fan magazine pinup, and Jeremy Miller, respectively.

The show was always being pushed to be funnier, she explained, and one thing the writers did was to have Mike make jokes about Carol. While she didn't like what was being said in the scripts, as a child star, she felt powerless to say anything. 

"At that point, like, I didn't feel too sensitive about my weight, so I...kinda could brush it off," Gold said. "But I went away one summer on a hiatus, and I came [back with] the 'freshman 15,' basically. And then the jokes accelerated when I came back and became meaner. Instead of one joke, there were two jokes, there were three jokes."

So Gold spoke up.

"I finally tried to find my voice and go to them. These, you know, men who I've known a long time, but they're twice my age and, you know, quite intimidating," she said. "It was out of my character to speak up, but it was hurting me, And I was sensitive to it, and I knew I had gained a little bit of weight. I had never had that problem before."

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She realizes now that the weight was just from growing up.

The oldest of five girls, the actress said she was told she was being too sensitive and that a real brother would say such things to her, an observation that didn't help.

"I'm like, 'But it's still hurting my feelings.... And so I would negotiate," Gold said. "'Could you take out that joke?' Maybe a joke like, 'Here comes wide load,' and you're not talking just about Carol anymore."

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But Carol, as she saw it, was her. And she'd have to stand in front of a live studio audience and have those things said to her.

Eventually, the show directly requested that Gold lose weight. So she began hitting the gym more and eventually adopted a diet of just 500 calories per day. After that, she was complimented on her looks non-stop, so Gold kept it up.

"Something hit me and I'm like, I will not be the butt of anybody's joke again," she said. "You will not get that from me. I became resolute, and I'm really stubborn — I'm a Taurus. I became resolute in not letting that happen, and I stayed on the diet."

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The show then wanted her to gain weight.

She ended up in an inpatient treatment in 1992, the same year the show ended. By February of that year, she was on the cover of PEOPLE talking about her disease. In it, her mom spoke about being horrified to see Gold's 5-foot-3-inch body weighing just over 90 pounds.

By sharing her story, Gold helped bring awareness to a subject that hadn't previously been spoken about openly.

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