Portia de Rossi Bulimia Battle Featured In LGBT ‘It Got Better’ Series: ‘I Didn’t Eat For 10 Days’ [Video]

Portia de Rossi and her battle with bulimia are among the topics featured in It Got Better. The new documentary series features stars talking about struggles ranging from Portia’s bulimia to Jane’s coming of age story. It was inspired by the It Gets Better Project, which was created to tackle suicide among LGBT young people, reported Entertainment Tonight.

Although Portia is now 42, she reveals that her eating disorder began when she was only 12-years-old.

“I felt tremendous responsibility when I was 12 years old, and I was put on a catwalk. My modeling agents had told me to go on a diet. So I didn’t eat for 10 days before then,” she recalls in the episode (see below).

But when the other models bullied her and taunted her, Portia felt desperate to ease her emotional pain. She found comfort in food.

“When I got in the car after that event and just opened up a bag of my favorite candy and just put my whole head in it and I think, ‘S**t, what have I done? I just undid two weeks worth of dieting.’ So then I vomit.”

The cycle of binge and purge continued for Portia as she battled bulimia.

“I erase the feelings with food, erase the food with vomiting, but you’re still left with the shame,” she recalled of the past.

In addition to Portia’s story of how life “got better,” Glee star Jane Lynch told her tale, reported the Washington Post.

Like Portia, Jane recalled her struggles from the past. But in Lynch’s case, it was the recognition that she is gay that caused her initial concern.

“For me, to be ostracized would have been the worst thing. To be thought of as different and not accepted was a fate worse than death, so I had to make some really big decisions about how I was going to go forth in life.”

The producers have a focused goal with the documentary series, and that’s to share LGBT celebrities’ personal stories of struggle and success. It Got Better involves both L/Studio, producer of Lisa Kudrow’s Web Therapy, and the It Gets Better Project.

As the Inquisitr reported, preventing suicides among LGBT young people has become a major concern since a transgender teen’s highly publicized suicide.

Leelah Alcorn, a teen who killed herself when her parents refused to let her transition, became the focus for activist Stephen Ira, the 22-year-old son of Annette Bening and Warren Beatty.

“One of the last things [L]eelah [A]lcorn did in her life was tell another trans girl on tumblr that she was beautiful,” tweeted Ira following the news of Leelah’s death.

[Photo by Valerie Macon/Getty Images]