Amelia Gray Hamlin beat eating disorder after warning she’d die

Amelia Gray Hamlin has revealed that she gained 50 pounds in sixth months while trying to recover from her eating disorder, saying it was ‘so hard being in the public eye.’ 

The 19-year-old daughter of Lisa Rinna and Harry Hamlin opened up about her struggles with anorexia and how she ended up getting treatment on the latest episode of Dear Media podcast The Skinny Confidential Him and Her.

The model said she was about 14 or 15 when her eating disorder started. She was going through an ‘awkward stage’ and was upset by her appearance in paparazzi photos that were taken when she was leaving a store with her mom.   

‘I remember crying to my mom about them,’ she recalled.

The teen decided to do the Master Cleanse after reading online that a model she had looked up to at the time would always do it ‘before a huge job.’ 

The only think you are supposed to consume on the cleanse is a ‘lemonade’ made up of water, fresh lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and pure organic maple syrup. 

Amelia said she did it for 25 days, only occasionally allowing herself soup or a couple of sweet potato fries. Then she started ‘working out a lot’ to combat what she was eating when she was out with her friends. 

‘Even if it was one in the morning, like I would go in the gym ’cause I was living at my parents’ house and I would just work out, run on the treadmill,’ she explained. 

One day her mother came into the gym and asked her what was going on because her sister, Delilah Belle Hamlin, thought she was anorexic. 

‘I was like, “No, Delilah just doesn’t want me to ever be skinnier than her,”‘ she recalled telling her mom. 

‘So this was an ongoing thing for a long time where they didn’t know that there was actually anything wrong because I would just be like, “No, Delilah was trying to sabotage me.”‘ 

Amelia noted that her older sister was ‘genuinely concerned’ for her at the time, but she played up a sibling rivalry between them to fool her parents. 

She eventually got so thin that her family took her to UCLA to get her treatment.

‘We show up. It’s like this really scary old man’s office. It could not have been a more uncomfortable vibe for me,’ she said. ‘I sat there and there was just like books everywhere, even on the floor…

‘He looked at me and he was like, “So, yeah, basically, at this rate in about four months you’re going to be 45 pounds and you’re going to be dead.”‘ 

Amelia remembered asking herself how that is even ‘humanly possible’ and couldn’t get the number out of her head.    

‘I just snapped out of it,’ she said. ‘I was so lucky that I was just like, yeah, I don’t want to be 45 pounds.’  

She said the beginning of her recovery was particularly difficult because she started rapidly gaining weight and didn’t know why. 

‘I was still eating just an apple a day, and then I would have a bowl of vegetables at night, maybe with some sriracha and like a drizzle of olive oil if things got pretty crazy,’ she recalled. ‘I gained 50 pounds in six months and I was like, I know something’s wrong with me.’

Amelia noted it would be hard on anyone to gain 50 pounds in half a year, but it was even more so for her because she was battling anorexia and ‘still eating such sparse amounts of food.’  

‘I think that this is a reason why so many girls don’t want to get the help and they don’t want to get better because the treatment centers misinform you about the steps to take to heal,’ she explained. 

‘I think I was so nervous about healing because I thought there would be an IV in my arm of just nutrients or I’d have to stuff my face with a bag of Cheetos like every two hours.’ 

Amelia said the unexplained weight gain was detrimental to her recovery because she was continuing to do punishing workouts and restrict her food in an attempt to control it.    

‘I just remember working out eating like I did when I was anorexic and not allowing myself to heal because I was gaining even more weight than I had ever gained in my life. And then I just remember one day I was like breaking down and I was laying down on my parents’ kitchen counter, and I was like, something’s wrong.’

Amelia said her mom told her she was ‘fine’ and chalked up her weight gain to her eating more than she thought she was and not getting enough exercise.      

‘I tried doing all those things for a little bit, still nothing. I’m just gaining and gaining and gaining,’ she said. ‘And that I think was so hard, being in the public eye, gaining weight at such a young age. Like, that’s just so f****d up. Like, I hated that so much. Then I went to a doctor and he was like, “Whoa, like your levels are crazy.”‘

Amelia later learned she has Hashimoto’s disease, an autoimmune disorder in which the thyroid gland is attacked. 

She stressed that ‘the longer you’re anorexic, the more detrimental effects it’s going to actually have on your body.’

The model said that in addition to Hashimoto’s, she also has an inflamed thyroid, a hormone imbalance, depression, and anxiety. 

Amelia has been focused on healing her body and her mind. Nearly two years into her recovery, she admitted that she still can’t weigh herself.  

‘It’s fine if there’s a scale in my presence,’ she explained, ‘but once I decide to go on it, like I’m f****d.’