Outer Banks star Madelyn Cline calls body image struggles her “Roman Empire,” meaning it’s a topic that is always front of mind.

“People love to pay attention to weight specifically. It’s very bizarre to me,” Cline, 27, said in an Allure profile published on Thursday, July 10. “From season to season on Outer Banks, my appearance has changed with lots of factors: stress, breakups [and] healthy or unhealthy habits with food. It’s normal life.”

She added, “But the camera, [I] swear to God, picks up everything. Like, damn. Can I not be on my period? Can I not have a beer the night before? In the comment sections, we are not always family.”

While Cline tries to ignore any negative social media comments regarding her looks, it can be difficult to drown out the noise due to her previous struggles with disordered eating.

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“I think I was around 16 when I started working out a lot. I would wake up every morning at 5 a.m. and I would work out for 30 minutes. It was super rigorous cardio every day,” she told Women’s Health in 2020, adding she “started cutting calories” when the workouts didn’t yield overwhelming results.

Cline continued, “It would be the kind of thing where I would eat six almonds for breakfast, because I didn’t want to counteract the cardio I just did. It turned into not feeding myself protein and not feeding my body what it needed when I was working out so much.”

According to Cline, she got “angry” that her efforts weren’t “achieving a particular body image.”

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“I was harming myself and starving myself in the process of trying to achieve that,” the I Know What You Did Last Summer actress recalled. “That’s an awful place to be, especially as a teenager, when you’re idolizing a certain body type and you can’t achieve it. There’s nothing wrong with that, you’re just not built that way, and that’s okay. That’s perfectly fine.”

Cline ultimately learned to accept her body as is, thanks in part to her mom.

“She would stand there in the mirror with me and we would list out things that I liked about my body,” Cline stated. “After that repetition, those things became solidified in my mind. ‘I like my curves, I like my hips,’ and after a while, I started to love my body. I became so much happier.”

If you or someone you know struggles with an eating disorder, visit the National Alliance for Eating Disorders website or call their hotline at +1 (866) 662-1235. Text “ALLIANCE” to 741741 for free, 24/7 support.