Dancing With the Stars alum Cheryl Burke is opening up about her battle with mental health and body insecurity issues through the years.

“I do suffer from body dysmorphia, and especially as a dancer in front of mirrors constantly — since I was a little girl,” Burke, 41, told Entertainment Tonight in a candid interview published on Thursday, May 30. “Even before my Dancing With the Stars career, my weight has always been an issue. I think what people sometimes don’t understand is it is a lot of work [and] it takes a lot of work and it takes a lot of self-care.”

She added, “I have to say, in the height of my insecurity and my body dysmorphia were weekly fittings on the show. I don’t blame the show by any means, but it’s just the name of the game. We’re squeezing into these costumes, and it is what it is. It would affect me to the point where I would weigh myself constantly [and] I would travel with a scale.”

Burke eventually got to a point where she realized that the number on the scale “would dictate” her self-worth.

Cheryl Burke called out the “cruel” body-shamers who have been speculating about her appearance. “Let’s address the elephant in the comments section. I am not on Ozempic. I am not sick. I didn’t get a face transplant and I didn’t get a brow lift,” Burke, 41, said in a video shared via TikTok on Sunday, […]

“I knew that this could no longer continue,” she said, stressing that she was “never overweight” before she recently slimmed down. “I am still very curvy, like, it’s just the way my bone structure is. I think a lot of people may now take my weight loss as, ‘She’s not a good example.’ … I have chosen to lose weight to work on myself to feel good, to actually love what I see in the mirror, but more importantly, to love me.”

Burke, who stressed that she is still a fierce body-positive and mental health advocate, has been putting herself first since leaving DWTS in 2022.

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“I have done so much work on myself from the inside out. For me, I’m proud of that work and I wish the conversation [online] was geared more toward that instead of, ‘She is on Ozempic [or] she got a whole facelift and everything,’” she said of the now-viral comments, which she staunchly denied. “If I were to say it doesn’t affect me, I’d be lying. But, does it affect me as badly as it did when I was on [Dancing With the Stars]? Not even close.”

Burke, who no longer owns a scale, further broke down how she ended up dropping the excess pounds.

“I’m on a very clean food program called Zen. They deliver fresh to my home every single evening [and] I don’t eat past 6 p.m.,” she explained, not she used to binge-eat late at night. “It was not healthy. … Now, I have to choose myself [and] I have to choose to be healthy. It is something that I put as my No. 1 priority. I’m really focusing on me and feeling good, first arm within, and then whatever follows follows.”