Last week Whitney Port (who is an influencer best known for being on The Hills) posted on Instagram and acknowledged that she’s lost a lot of weight recently. People had been commenting on her photos saying things like “I’m concerned for you” but when her husband said he was worried for her, she said it made her pay attention. She said she wasn’t trying to lose weight on purpose but struggled to know what to eat and didn’t always make feeding herself a priority. Now she’s addressing her weight loss on her podcast With Whit, as well as how media outlets have covered the story. They’ve brought up other things she said in interviews years ago about restricting calories after seeing herself on TV for the first time, and not eating pasta. She explained that she just doesn’t like the texture of pasta.
Whitney Port had “no idea” she “weighed as little” as she did until she stepped on the scale.
The “Hills” star called the moment an “eye-opener” in Tuesday’s episode of her “With Whit” podcast, explaining, “Once you see the numbers, the numbers can’t lie.”
Port, 38, noted, “In my head, I didn’t think it was as big of a deal as it actually was, and I still don’t really. But I do think I’m clearly not eating enough and that how I look right now does not look healthy. It’s not how I want to look.
“I complain a lot about my lack of energy,” she continued. “Part of that stems from not giving myself what it actually needs.”
The former reality star asked her fans not to “worry” because she plans to “eat thoughtfully” and “put the right things in [her] body,” as well as “work out in a way that will build muscle.”
She promised, “I’m on it, guys. … I don’t think it’s as big of an issue as it may seem.”
Her prior statements about weight loss came up again: In the wake of her honest social media upload, past interviews resurfaced in which the fashion designer revealed she had “never tried pasta before” and was only eating 1,000 calories daily at one point in her life.
Port addressed those statements Tuesday, calling the focus on them “salacious.”
She clarified that the lack of pasta in her life was “just a pure texture thing,” claiming, “It has nothing to do with nutrition and that it can be a cause of weight gain.”
As for her calorie intake, she said the restriction stemmed from seeing herself on TV and being “a little bit shocked” by how “pudgy” she looked onscreen.
“That started maybe a slippery slope of some control issues over what I look like,” Port recalled.
I didn’t know she said those things about restricting her calories so severely and it is concerning. Whitney strikes me as a very “type A” person so it makes sense that she’s struggled with control and what sounds like perfectionism in the past. Also when she was on that show in the 2000s, we were in such a different place culturally around food, eating, and standards of beauty. Things aren’t perfect now but they were worse back then. Of course she had body dysmorphia when she was on TV in 2008! It would be shocking if she didn’t! She also talks about food in moralistic terms in the podcast, referring to putting the “right” things in her body, and calling the ice cream and pizza she’s been eating on vacation as “junk.” I know a lot of people sort food into “good” and “bad” categories but if she feels guilty for eating those types of foods on vacation, that makes me feel really sad because that’s one of the joys of being on holiday. It’s ok to indulge in higher-calorie foods on special occasions. Also a lot of people commented on my last post about Whitney and pointed out that low appetite/forgetting to eat can be common in people who have ADHD or are otherwise neurodivergent. That could be another part of Whitney’s struggle to make nutrition a priority. I really hope she has some professional support with this, whether from a dietitian or a therapist or both.
She strikes me as a really picky eater. If you have a problem with the “texture of pasta,” you’re a picky AF eater. So I can see why she’s generally disinterested in food. And when you eat very little, your stomach adapts and you tend to want very little. Someone needs to encourage her to take an interest in life, via food.
@GrnieWnie, I don’t agree, respectfully. I, who will eat virtually anything, am not keen on pasta either. My family don’t understand that, and I’ve struggled to explain it, but reading this post has made me realise that THAT is exactly why I don’t like pasta…it’s the texture!
Okay, so you’re a picky eater too, then. Pasta can be fried, boiled or baked. Dismissing a whole group of food bc you don’t like something about it that isn’t even characteristic of the entire group=picky and many might say privileged. Just own it. Don’t wait for a world in which people have patience for others who just “forget to eat” or “don’t like the texture of carbs (or whatever else).”
“Didn’t always make feeding herself a priority” is something people with eating disorders often say. Lily Allen said something similar very recently. Nobody will ever admit that they’re skipping meals or limiting calories to lose weight, so they insist they just don’t think about food much and therefore forget to eat enough. Healthy people might forget to eat a meal if they’re busy, but they don’t usually forget to eat enough *overall* to maintain a healthy body weight unless there’s something going on mentally, e.g. grief, stress, depression, eating disorder.
Whilst I agree that those covering up an eating disorder will absolutely claim other reasons for not eating, the point in the post about ADHD/ neuro divergence is absolutely accurate. I do not restrict what I eat at all, or calorie count, or think about food in that way at all, yet I regularly get to 3 or 4 in the afternoon and realise I haven’t eaten anything yet that day, because either I’ve straight up forgotten, or remebered at one point in the day then got distracted by a work task and forgotten again. Or because cooking properly would require some washing up so I eat some cereal and intend to return, wash it and cook properly then don’t.
People that know me well have seen this play out and also see what I eat and that I don’t watch what I eat, but those that don’t know me so well probably assume it’s intentional calorie counting / restriction / disordered eating that impacts my weight and that kinda sucks.
Texture problems are not being a picky eater, plus we are allowed to not like some foods.
I can eat anything, I do have issues with texture but I can generally ignore it.
My youngest son is not a picky eater, but he can’t stand the texture of beans.
My older son can’t touch certain fabrics without it physically hurting him, its more than just not liking how it feels.
Also we are all three ADHD, ASD plus multiple affect disorders, being neurodivergent is not being picky AF. Get educated and leave your bias at the door.
It seems like she admitted that she thought she was pudgy and that started an effort to lose weight?? Sometimes people lose weight in not so healthy ways and then can’t figure out how to get back to eating habits that provide the right nutrition and balance. My mom still eats in a disordered way in her 80s so it can last a very long time because it becomes a way of controlling emotions and feeling safe.
I had never heard of Whitney. It’s good that she’s acknowledging that she’s lost weight and has low energy because of it. Gaining muscle is healthy…what I don’t hear her saying is that actually she needs to gain weight. That has me concerned.
Where I live, since Covid there have been MORE people with ED, not less. Body image is a huge issue. For neurodivergent people there’s “stimulation” issues like textures, misophonia, and a need to control aspects of their life. That need to control things is huge. And more LGBTQ+ people, including guys, are being diagnosed with eating disorders. This is something personal that people usually don’t discuss, and if you have other mental health issues, people need to address the ED first, because if you can’t think clearly, you cannot address the other issues.
Strength and hugs to those of you fighting ED or supporting loved ones who are!
I don’t think she’s facing her issues yet. A person who talks about putting the ‘right’ food in her body & doing the ‘right’ type of exercise, is someone with an ED. And she states she still doesn’t think it’s a problem, not really. She’s not there yet. Good luck to her.
@Beanie-thank god you said it first.
As someone who has struggled with various forms of disordered eating including anorexia, the language she uses here is incredibly familiar. I hope I’m wrong, but everything she says from “I still don’t think it’s a big deal” to “sometimes I just struggle to find time to feed myself” is ALL shit that I would say to placate concerned friends and family members. The fact that her husband said something—-red flag.
Finding time to eat or figuring out what to eat shouldn’t be an issue these days. If you have dietary/allergy concerns, there are a myriad of options. If you need something fast and easy, there are tons of protein bars, shakes, snack packs etc for you to chose from.
And when I clicked on the photos I gasped. Because she didn’t have the weight to lose. Like me at my lowest, I was probably only 10 lb under normal weight but that’s all it took to make me look skeletal. I hope that she gets real with herself and gets the help she needs.
Been there myself, @Kitten. *hugs*
Agreed. I hope she works with a therapist familiar with disordered eating who will encourage her to dig a little deeper past the excuses she’s offering to see if there isn’t something deeper. Something she said before about “not knowing what to eat” sounded verrrry familiar to me and the translation in my situation was “I don’t know what to eat that is the most healthy and perfect thing to eat right now and I don’t feel like spending that much mental energy and time calculating calories/carbs/macros of everything I have already eaten today or would maybe be interested in eating so I’m just going to eat the very tiniest thing or nothing at all”
When you have disordered eating for a long time you truly stop knowing what you even like to eat or when you are hungry or full and it took me a lot of work to come back into my body and recognize hunger and satiation.
I just realized it myself in the last few years, that I’ve had an eating disorder since I was in my early teens. I’m much more self aware at the ripe old age of 51. People used to ask me if I was anorexic all the time when I was younger. I didn’t eat. I didn’t want to eat. I wasn’t hungry. My parents went through a very contentious divorce that lasted my entire teenage years among many other things. I look back and I guess subconsciously, that was the only thing I truly had any control of. Maybe part of it was my anxiety too. I weighed less than a 100lbs when I got pregnant with my 1st child. I hardly gained any weight because I had morning sickness all day for the first 5 months. With my second (a boy) I couldn’t stop eating! I think I was ecstatic that I didn’t have to get pregnant again because it was a boy and I knew I didn’t have to get pregnant again. Anyway, I still don’t eat much. But thanks to menopause and and crazy thyroid, I have gained some weight. I tell myself it’s because of my work, that I skip meals. Actually, I think it’s old habits and my high anxiety that keeps me from eating until after I get home from work. I’ve been to therapy about some of my issues but I need to re up and see her again my eating habits. Best of luck to Whitney and all of you out there! I have some terrible texture issues with some foods too, like mushrooms. And I can’t sleep on scratchy sheets.
I can be wrong but if the texture of certain foods like pasta (in her case) make her turn away from food, I’m guessing she may have some sensory issues/food aversions. From the way she makes it sound, she also is one of those people who do not eat when stressed or under pressure. Many seem to think when people are stressed they overeat (maybe that’s more common?) I don’t know but when I’m stressed I simply cannot eat and have to forever myself too. I’m glad she is acknowledging she has an issue, and hopefully she gets some guidance from a nutritionist and other medical professionals.
I came to say this exact thing – when I am stressed out, anxious, or depressed, I can’t eat. Or sleep. So not only am I not hungry, I’m also nauseated (more so with stress and anxiety than depression). When I force myself to eat during those times, half of the time I will be unable to keep it down. I also exercise more when I’m anxious to alleviate the discomfort, or when I am depressed to try to snap out of it.
Fortunately for me that hasn’t happened in many years! But when I’m happy I gain weight. When I’m anxious or depressed, I lose weight. I have to drink premier protein or another meal replacement type drink to get my calories and nutrients.
Instead of judging we all need to send her strength and compassion for her healing. Food stuff is so crippling, and the 90s and 00s were RELENTLESS with the thin-at-all costs messaging to women.
Yeah, I hope she gets the help she needs and figures out a balance. I’m around the same age and remember sneaking diet pills in middle school when I was already super thin, the 90’s-early 2000’s was rough and I’m actually still struggling with always thinking about my weight. Another thing is that when I was at my thinnest after having kids and restricting calories way too much I think my dad was the only person who said I looked like I had lost too much weight. My body obsessed in laws didn’t say a word and neither did my mom who was always dieting when I was young. I look back on pics though and think, yikes, I was not in a good place.
Ironically, I have a son who is super picky and has sensory issues and my mom is always talking about how he is skin and bones and I “need to feed him more” like I’m with holding food. He’s 10 and eats like a normal person but because both my husband and I were thing a kids and his pickiness his really thin but not unhealthy.
I get where she’s coming from with not really knowing. When I was at my very skinniest, I knew I was tiny but was overall pretty happy with it. When I look back at those pictures now, it’s shocking — like it’s immediately obviously how underweight I was. It just happened gradually because of a lot going on in my life and at the time (like Whitney) I didn’t think it was as big of a deal as it was.
Yes, struggling to eat and struggling with food textures may be a symptom of neurodivergence or related medication.
But just because she doesn’t eat properly, doesn’t mean we can project that onto Whitney.
There are tons of medical or psychological reasons for weight loss. Let’s not try to arm chair diagnose Whitney for anything and let her come out with the cause for her weight loss (if there even is one apart from what she has already stated) if and when she feels comfortable to do so.
This breaks my heart. I’m glad she’s finally addressing it. I have always enjoyed following along Whitney’s journey. She seemed like such a pure soul and her struggles with secondary fertility were helping me with how to be there for my friend’s fertility challenges. But when the weight was coming off so quick and it seemed she was leaning into it (often posting photos of her posing in outfits/swimsuits that I felt highlighted her tininess), I had to unfollow her on IG because that was triggering. I had really struggled with body dysmorphia and an ED for so long and it was actually uncomfortable to look at her photos. I hope she is in a more healing place.
I really like Whit, too. I watch her recaps of MTV shows with her husband, and they seem like pretty down-to-earth (for LA), genuinely nice people. Her fertility struggles were soooo relatable for me personally, and I thought some of this weight loss stuff could be attributed to that as well — the disconnection to one’s body (how we truly feel and look), inability or lack of desire to eat, low energy, etc. all seem like symptoms of burnout and trauma.
Whatever’s going on, I really hope she seeks some help that involves speaking to someone who can help make food a neutral for her — neither good nor bad. She’s always been a *little* almond-y with talking about “good” foods, but I think it’s partly a product of where she lives and the food culture of LA. If she can get to a place where she can have something she finds delicious without moralizing it one way or the other, I think she wins.
The categorizing foods as good or bad are giant red flags. Thinking that way and restricting because of it is a problem. And while the issue with textures may be a sign of neurodivergence it can also be a sign of disordered eating. A coworker of mine struggled with disordered eating and she said she was a vegetarian. We realized that this wasn’t for any reason but that she simply didn’t want to eat anything else because of the calories. She literally just ate vegetables.
All of this.
People find new and creative ways to do deflection speak regarding eating disorders.
I dunno, seems toxic to indulge her clear need for attention on this. We’re not her friends or therapist, there’s no need to muse and self examine on this in public. It’s self indulgence.
She may have an eating disorder, or she may not. Only she can truly know!
I do want to point out that if she does have ADHD, not finding time to eat (or forgetting) is pretty normal and not at all indicative of an ED. Eating disorders are about control, but those of us with ADHD have issues with executive function (not control). You need executive function to complete tasks like feeding yourself.
She may have an ED or had one in the past, but I totally get why she could feel it’s not a big deal if she has ADHD. She may need more calories but realize she doesn’t have an issue with control around food. It’s a totally different thing. You can compare it to a toddler that doesn’t want to stop playing to eat even though they are hungry. That’s very different than a toddler who is refusing to eat because they want to control the food that goes into their mouth even though the outcome is the same.
I must first say who doesn’t like pasta?! Secondly, I audibly gasped at her appearance in these photos. I watched her on The Hills and she was always thin. As someone who is in recovery from an eating disorder myself (disordered eating) and body dysmorphia, she is a severe case. When I was at my thinnest and my bones were sticking out like hers, it took years to look at photos from that time and see how sick I truly was. I hope she is just downplaying this publicly and is seeking serious help. I know she was struggling with infertility and had suffered a miscarriage(s) last I heard about her I believe a year or so ago. Maybe the pain of that physically manifested and exacerbated her disease. I can almost bet that her ED is playing a big role in her infertility. I will pray for her.