Contact Music has some quotes from singer Jewel, who was interviewed in the latest issue of Shape on her body image. It’s kind of hearbreaking to hear that Jewel was so affected by press coverage calling her chubby that she once ate a whole cake and then tried to throw it up. She wasn’t successful, and she said that she vowed never to hurt her body to stay thin:

Singer JEWEL was driven to the brink of an eating disorder when she was once labelled “the chubby RENEE ZELLWEGER”.

The Who Will Save Your Soul star was horrified when she heard about the nasty nickname during her first few years in the spotlight, and admits the painful jibe left her on the verge of bulimia.

She tells Shape magazine, “My feelings were so hurt by that story, I ended up bingeing on an entire cake. Afterward, I actually tried to throw it all up, but thankfully I couldn’t do it.

“It made me think, ‘I can’t go down this road.’ I had seen so many performers develop eating disorders or try to control their weight with drugs, and I decided I would do no harm to my body.”

[From Contact Music]

The other day I was a restaurant bathroom when I heard the woman next to me go in, throw up quickly, and then come out like nothing was wrong. It was really obvious that it wasn’t morning sickness or food poisoning and I wanted to say something to her but I kept my mouth shut. It probably wouldn’t have helped her anyway.

I have struggled with my weight and am back on track through Weight Watchers now but I can completely relate to eating to cope with problems. I still have a hard time when I’m stressed out as I just want to reach for a high carb snack to cope. It’s hard to replace those habits with healthier ones and it’s easy to fall into a trap where you gain a lot of weight quickly. It’s easy to get started and then eat a lot of calories quickly if you’re in that crazy eating mindset. I want to give Jewel a hug and tell her it will be ok. She seems to have come to terms with whatever she was struggling with, anyway.

Oh have any of you read that new book that Oprah is touting as revolutionary, Women, Food and God by Geneen Roth? I haven’t read the whole thing yet but I did see an excerpt in O! and read the preview on Amazon and found myself relating to a lot of passages. I’m not a spiritual person and it touts that heavily, although there are a lot of lessons to be learned about our emotional reasons for eating. I think whenever we can slow down and question our relationship with food it helps.

Update: Here’s Jewel’s Shape cover and more quotes from her interview, via The Huffington Post.

On being called “the chubby Renee Zellweger” in the media years ago:
“My feelings were so hurt by that story, I ended up bingeing on an entire cake. Afterward, I actually tried to throw it all up, but thankfully I couldn’t do it. It made me think, ‘I can’t go down this road.’ I had seen so many performers develop eating disorders or try to control their weight with drugs, and I decided I would do no harm to my body.”

Her advice to women:
“We should be more like men, God bless ’em. They can take their shirts off and show their man boobs, and they don’t give a hoot. But women are so critical of themselves. We can be gorgeous and hot and still be embarrassed to wear a tank top. So if you can’t stop looking in the mirror, at least try to not think badly about yourself when you do.”

On her diet:
“I try to stay away from an all-or-nothing mentality when it comes to food. It’s like a pendulum: The more extreme I am–like saying, ‘I’m not going to eat any carbs’–the further it’s going to swing to the other side and I’m going to binge. My dad sends me fresh salmon and halibut from Alaska as well as dried nettles, which I like to put into soups. I also eat a lot of raw vegetables or bitter greens, like kale and dandelion greens, lightly sautéed in olive oil. People are so fat-phobic these days, but eating good fats is important, which is why I always try to get some olive oil, coconut oil, and avocado into whatever I’m making.”

[Shape via Huffington Post]

Here’s Jewel in 1999 and 2000 (first two photos below, first one is with South Park Creator Trey Parker). This may be the time period she’s talking about as it’s the only time I could find in which she looked even slightly larger than how tiny she is now. She’s lovely and not at all chubby. I also included a photo of her from 2002 and one from the 2010 CMAs as you can see how she had her teeth fixed very slightly. The header photo and other photos are recent and credit: WENN.com

1999:

2000:

2002:

2010:

2010:

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