Demi Moore is making waves with her new movie, The Substance, in which she plays a famous aerobics instructor who gets fired on her 50th birthday, is offered a substance that transforms her into an enhanced version of herself, and things start to move fast from there.
While promoting the film, the 61-year-old actress opened up about her approach to health and revealed that she wasn’t always approaching fitness in the healthiest way. Here’s what she said:
Demi felt “pressure” to lose weight after giving birth.
The mother of three filmed her 1993 classic, Indecent Proposal, after giving birth to her second daughter, Scout. But the process wasn’t easy: Demi was stressed out over losing weight after giving birth and pushed herself too hard.
“I put so much pressure on myself,” she told CBS Sunday Morning on Sept. 22. “I certainly had experiences where I was told to lose weight. And as embarrassing and humiliating as all of that may have been, that’s what I did to myself.”
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Demi says she was filming Indecent Proposal when Scout was five or six months old. “So I’d nurse her through the night, wake up in the dark with a sweatshirt and a headlamp, and bike to Paramount, where we were shooting, and then I’d shoot a full day, usually 12 hours, and then start all over again,” Demi said, noting that she’d sometimes bike up to 60 miles a day. “It’s so crazy and ridiculous to even think about what I did to my body.”
Demi said now she’s not too thrilled that she did it. “I look back and I’m like, ‘Was it really that important?’ Probably not,” she said. “But at the time, I thought that was everything.”
What is Demi Moore’s exercise routine?
Demi has been sharing snippets of her workout routine here and there, including working out with the help of a mirror (now known as the Lululemon Studio).
But in the ’90s, Demi became “obsessed” with her on-screen appearance, starting with the 1992 film A Few Good Men, in which she played a crooked lawyer.
“I couldn’t imagine quitting working out,” Demme wrote in her 2019 autobiography, Inside Out. “My job was to wear the demanding military uniform I would wear in two months for A Few Good Men. Getting in shape for that film was the beginning of my obsession with working out.”
After five years, Demi decided to forego regular workouts.
“I added a new mantra to my daily prayer: Have the courage to be seen without padding or protection. I couldn’t keep fighting my body and my weight. I had to make peace with it,” she added. “I started by quitting hard exercise. I never went back to my home gym. Ever. The room where the gym was is now my office.”
She stopped going to the gym after filming GI Jane.
Demi broke her irregular exercise pattern after filming the 1997 movie G.I. Jane. She’d “gained loads of muscle” for her role as a soldier. After filming wrapped, she found herself weighing more than usual, but decided she’d had enough.
“My normal response would have been to fast again and start exercising to lose weight, but I did neither. I had reached my limits,” she writes in her memoir. “I returned home to Idaho and, while in the shower one day, an idea struck me: I just needed to get back to my natural shape.”
“I’ve truly experienced the gift of surrender,” Demi said in September.
“I got so exhausted with this battle that I finally gave up,” she told The New York Times. “I didn’t know what my natural body shape was, so I just wanted to get back to my natural body shape. I literally couldn’t go to the gym. I couldn’t control my diet like that.”
Now she’s more focused on being confident.
Demi joked to the Times that fake it till you make it was “my main college,” and that she now feels “emotionally sober.”
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“Being emotionally sober means how I live my life, the quality of my interactions with people, my ability to serve others,” she said. “That’s all within the scope of my emotional sobriety…. If I go into a room or a gathering and I’m uncomfortable, I don’t have to try to ease that tension. I can actually just say, ‘Wow, that’s interesting. I’m kind of uncomfortable right now.'”
Collin Miller is a freelance writer specializing in general health, sexual health and relationships, and lifestyle trends, and has written for Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Self, Glamour, and more. He has a master’s degree from American University, lives by the beach, and hopes to one day run a Teacup Pig and taco truck.
