Candace Cameron Bure Regrets Treating Body 'So Badly'

Actor Candace Cameron Bure is reflecting on how "badly" she treated her body.

During an episode of her eponymous podcast, the "Full House" alum said she was "so mean" to herself before turning to the Bible for guidance.

Bure said she first began to feel "so bad" about her body in the fifth and sixth grades.

Bure, 49, revealed that she's "been on every single diet plan since [she] was 12 years old." She traced her long-standing battle with food to her history of eating disorders, adding that the pressure intensified in the 1990s when skinny supermodels became the standard of beauty.

Bure grew emotional as she recalled a dream she had while "working through some really deep issues in therapy." She said the "random" dream was inspired by a story from Numbers 22 in the Bible, where a man named Balaam beats his donkey despite the mule's faithful service. Bure said she saw a parallel between Balaam's mistreatment of the donkey and how she treated her own body.

"So that's the story that is in the Bible, and I wake up from this dream one morning and God just vividly showed me that I've been like Balaam," she said. "I've whipped my body. I've spoken to it so harshly. So mean. 'What are you doing? Why do you look this way? Why are you fat? Why can't you be like every other body?'

"And then God allowed my body to speak back. And my body said back to me, 'Have I not been the body that's carried you all the days of your life? Am I not your legs that allow you to walk? Am I not your arms that allow you to pick up and feed yourself?"

The "amazing revelation" motivated her to question why she treated her body "so badly."

"It was the weirdest story out of the Bible that God spoke to me about how mean I've been to my body," she said. "And yet I just never saw it that way. It's like this beautiful, amazing thing that God gave me."

Bure has been candid about her struggles with body image, revealing in 2016 that she fell into a vicious cycle of binge eating and purging after moving to Montreal to be with her husband, who was a professional hockey player. He was often away during the hockey season, and she felt lonely. So she ate for comfort.

"I got into a cycle of binge eating and feeling such guilt and shame for that, that I would start purging," she told People at the time. "And without even knowing, it soon just took over to a point where you feel such a loss of control."

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