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Demi Lovato Shows Off 'Accidental' Weight Loss

by Valerie Williams

Demi Lovato says she’s “full of peace” while avoiding “diet culture” in a new Instagram video

Demi Lovato has long been open about her struggles with eating and exercise disorders and her desire to embrace body positivity. She’s shared photos of her stretch marks and details about being in recovery, but today, she’s all smiles as she describes being “full of peace” after ignoring the garbage messaging of diet culture.

Lovato shared brief video of herself in front of the mirror, tugging out a pair of pants to demonstrate that she’s “accidentally lost weight.” The reason is pretty awesome. “I don’t count calories anymore,” she says. “I don’t over exercise anymore. I don’t restrict or purge.”

Lovato shares that she no longer lives life “according to diet culture” and that it’s actually meant losing weight without trying. “This is a different experience,” she says. “But I feel full Not of food But of divine wisdom and cosmic guidance.”

“Peace Serenity Joy And love,” she writes.

And how damn good does that sound? Counting calories is a toxic nightmare and it’s no surprise that Lovato is finding herself feeling more peaceful after letting go of that mindset. But after sharing her struggles with eating and exercise disorders, we should all understand that being able to stop those damaging and dangerous behaviors is an incredible victory.

The singer told Ashley Graham on her podcast last year that even when she thought she was recovering, that simply wasn’t the case. “I don’t have to be in a one-piece leotard on stage, because I’m tired of running myself into the ground with workouts and extreme dieting, that I thought the past few years was recovery from an eating disorder when it actually was just completely falling into it,” Lovato shared about the pressure she was putting on herself a few years ago to look a certain way.

She even told Graham that she thought her eating and exercise disorders may have contributed to her 2018 overdose. “I honestly think that’s kinda what led to everything happening over the past year was just me thinking I found recovery when I didn’t, and then living this kind of lie and trying to tell the world I was happy with myself when I really wasn’t,” she shared at the time.

Her current outlook sounds a lot like what she said last year: “Someone needs to stand up for people that don’t naturally look that way. I had to work my ass off every day in the gym, six days a week, to maintain that figure and it’s just like, that led me only one way and I don’t want to go down that path again. I’m not willing to destroy my mental health to look a certain way anymore.”

It sounds like she’s practicing exactly that a full year later — and she should be incredibly proud of how far she’s come.