Lena Dunham has opened up about gaining and losing weight, revealing that sadness has been the only thing that has caused her to shed pounds.
The Girls star and creator, whose size has fluctuated over the years due to illness, said that as a young woman working in Hollywood, she could not pretend weight was “not a thing”.
The actress, 33, told Elle that the end of her six-year relationship with musician Jack Antonoff, who has written and produced for stars including Taylor Swift and Lorde, caused her to lose “a lot of weight”.
Dunham, who recently moved to Wales to film new HBO series Industry, is currently writing a food diary for the magazine.
She said: “If I write down what I eat, I’ll have to hold myself accountable and accountable people don’t gain thirty pounds in a single month.
“Yes, I am body positive but I am also a young, single woman working in Hollywood and I can’t just pretend that weight is not a thing. It’s a thing.”
She added: “Sadness is the only thing that’s ever made me lose weight. Two years ago, during the last gasps of my six-year relationship, I lost weight.
“Not a little weight. Not the kind of weight where your bras feel kind of generous and you marvel at your subtle but oh-wow-it’s-definitely-there-now clavicle. No, it was a lot of weight.
“It happened, like many things, at first slowly and then all at once. It started with a stomach infection that necessitated a diet of basmati rice and bottles of Pedialyte (didn’t hate it).
“Then came the 2016 election, when we all either started or stopped eating en masse.”
The Golden Globe-winner was 31 when she had a hysterectomy following severe endometriosis.
She said: “‘At the end of that relationship, the weight was falling off in double digits but, as I explained to my closest friends, I experienced none of the heady triumph of the women showing off their formerly huge jeans in a full page add for weight-loss pills.”
The November issue of Elle UK is on sale from Thursday October 3.