Lena Dunham Compares What She Ate When She Weighed 138 Pounds With What She Eats at 24 Pounds Heavier

Lena Dunham lost a substantial amount of weight sometime after the 2016 election. And after getting tons of praise for what was, essentially, a side effect of depression, the Girls star shared the details of her "diet" in a darkly sardonic way.  

Appearing on The Howard Stern Show in February 2017, Dunham said: "Everyone’s been asking like, ‘What have you been doing?’ And I’m like, ‘Try soul-crushing pain and devastation and hopelessness and you, too, will lose weight.'”

The writer and actress has also had very public struggles with endemetroisis, and just recently made the tough decision to overcome the pain of the disease by having a hystorectomy at 31. 

In short, she's not exactly the kind of celebrity who's keen to break down what she does to maintain a so-called bikini body. But, Dunham did recently open about what she ate to shed weight fast, and what she eats now that she's healthier and nearly 30 pounds heavier.   

In a July 10 Instagram post that showed side-by-side captures of her at different weights, she wrote: "On the left: 138 pounds, complimented all day and propositioned by men and on the cover of a tabloid about diets that work. Also, sick in the tissue and in the head and subsisting only on small amounts of sugar, tons of caffeine and a purse pharmacy. On the right: 162 pounds, happy joyous & free, complimented only by people that matter for reasons that matter, subsisting on a steady flow of fun/healthy snacks and apps and entrees, strong from lifting dogs and spirits. Even this OG body positivity warrior sometimes looks at the left picture longingly, until I remember the impossible pain that brought me there and onto my proverbial knees."

The actress ended her post with a body-positive bang: "As I type I can feel my back fat rolling up under my shoulder blades. I lean in," she wrote.