Brittany Snow has revealed that she discovered she had an eating disorder by reading a magazine article about another woman’s struggle.
The 39-year-old actress shared the story during an appearance on the Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard podcast, where she traced her battle back to age 13, when she first started dieting. Snow told Shepard that the habit quickly spiraled into what she described as an addiction, becoming the only thing she cared about outside of her work. She noted that growing up in the 1990s meant there was virtually no public conversation about eating disorders, leaving her without language for what she was experiencing.
Snow said she eventually reached a weight her father recognized as dangerous, prompting him to intervene. She began therapy at 16, but it was a magazine piece that finally gave her a name for her condition. “I read an article in a magazine about this woman who had an eating disorder,” she said. “And I was like the way she’s counting her food and the way she’s talking about her body. That’s exactly what I do.”
The article became a talisman. Snow carried it in her back pocket because it “signified somebody had an answer to this,” she explained. “It made me feel not alone.”
Years later, she experienced what she described as a full-circle moment when a girl approached her in a coffee shop holding Snow’s own article about her recovery. The Pitch Perfect star had by then become the figure offering answers to someone else.
Earlier this year, Snow marked 17 years of recovery with a candid Instagram post. “Seventeen years ago, I didn’t know if I would make it. I couldn’t see a future, and I certainly couldn’t imagine one where I would learn to be kind to myself,” she wrote. “If someone had told me then that I would not only live, but one day have a beautiful, full life, free from the cycle of self-destruction and my eating disorder I truly don’t think I would have believed them.”
She credited a persistent inner voice for carrying her through. “Somewhere underneath the noise, there was a tiny voice inside me that kept saying: don’t give up. There is so much more to your story,” she continued in the September post. “There was so much beauty ahead that I couldn’t see yet. So much love. And one of the greatest gifts of making it through is being able to turn around and share the hope I couldn’t see possible.”
Snow directed her closing message to those currently struggling. “So many people have stood where you are standing. There is life beyond the place you are in today, even if you can’t picture it yet,” she penned, adding that she was “so grateful she stayed.”
The Hunting Wives star has increasingly used her platform to discuss mental health, building on the disclosure she first made in print years ago.