Sharna Burgess has opened up about overcoming her struggles with disordered eating.

During a Q&A session on Instagram Stories on Sunday, January 18, Burgess, 40, candidly shared, “I struggled mostly with binging and restricting.” She reflected on her past, noting, “As a teen and into my 20s, I had a really complicated relationship with food.”

Though she didn’t delve into details, Burgess did mention that her eating habits “changed” as she transitioned into her 30s.

The Dancing With the Stars alum has previously disclosed that her experiences with body dysmorphia began while she was training as a dancer.

Despite having deep affection for her Dancing With the Stars crew, Burgess admitted that her journey with the show has been anything but smooth. On the Monday, September 11, episode of her podcast, “Oldish,” which she co-hosts, she revealed, “My last five years on the show have been … rocky.”

“I had a real struggle with my body because of dance,” Burgess told Australia’s Good Health & Wellbeing magazine in a 2021 interview. “I remember being 15 and put on the scale every two days by my teachers and we were told whether we needed to lose weight or not. Every week I was told that I needed to lose more weight — and I certainly wasn’t overweight.”

She continued, “While dance was something that I needed in my life, it definitely instilled a negative body image. It also started a negative pattern of eating whereby I’d binge one day, and then starve the next. I struggled with that throughout the years. Even in my 20s, I’d look in the mirror and see the 15-year-old that was told every week she needed to lose more weight.”

Burgess started to appreciate her physique after joining the cast of DWTS in 2011.

“It was seeing just how much the celebrities on the show transformed and ended up loving their bodies through being able to move and dance that really shook my perspective,” she explained. “I thought, ‘Wow, I’ve been doing this my whole life.’ I started to see something else in the mirror, I started to see a body that had gotten me through some incredibly difficult times, that had created some beautiful moments, that had won championships, that had landed me a life I never ever thought possible.”

Burgess last served as a DWTS pro during 2021’s season 30, where she danced with now-fiancé Brian Austin Green. She left the show in 2022 after the pair welcomed son Zane. (Green, 52, is also a father of four children from previous relationships.)

Sharna Burgess is asked regularly about expanding her family with fiancé Brian Austin Green — but she isn’t so sure about having another baby just yet. “This is a daily dm from so many of you,” Burgess, 38, said in response to a fan asking about her family plans via Instagram Story on Saturday, October […]

“After long conversations and lots of thinking and really trying to sit with what was right, I have made the really hard decision to not do the season this year of Dancing With the Stars,” Burgess said in an August 2022 social media video. “I was not ready to spend, at minimum, 10 hours a day away from Zane. I’m a full-time breast-feeding mama, and not only that, I am so in love with being a mom. As much as it was hard to say no to Dancing, I have this family and this newborn at home that I may never get these moments back [with].”

Burgess, however, hasn’t walked away from the ballroom for good.

“It’s never a no,” she said on Sunday, answering another Instagram Story question about a potential reality TV comeback. “I was supposed to do something with them last season , but I was already working on a play in NYC and couldn’t commit. I love [the cast and crew], the show and am always going to want to be there.”

If you or someone you know struggles with an eating disorder, visit the National Alliance for Eating Disorders website or call their hotline at (866) 662-1235. Text “ALLIANCE” to 741741 for free, 24/7 support.