Awkward star Ashley Richards has spoken out about her personal struggle with eating disorders – revealing her eating issues started from the age of seven. The 22-year old has written about her battles with weight and eating in her new book ‘A Real Guide to Getting It Together Once and For all’, pin-pointing a comment made by a neighbour as the trigger for her condition: "I was chubby, and a neighbour of mine said, 'We don’t need to go to Krispy Kreme, you've got a jelly roll right there!' "This sort of dysmorphic idea of myself is still in my head. I'm still that girl. I still feel like that in a swimsuit." Rickards’ move to Los Angeles when she was 13 only increased the pressure, with the actress saying eating disorders were more socially acceptable growing up: "It's definitely rampant in this town. It became a lifestyle choice rather than a disorder. You'd go out with your friends all day long, and nobody is like, 'Why aren't we eating?' We're not eating because we have to have our rib cages showing." Recalling her first season of filming MTV show Awkward, Rickards revealed a trip to the hospital was the help she needed to start looking after her body: "I purged a lot one day and I got dizzy. I didn't know what was happening. I was shaking and I was sweating. I was cold, and I couldn't keep anything down. I was nauseous. I thought I was going to pass out, so I called 9-1-1." Doctors immediately recognised signs of an eating disorder, but Rickards said it was talking to other people that helped her gain control of her condition: "Even that wasn't enough to scare me into stopping completely. I really had to meet people who were open about their own struggles, and I had to open up to my cast members and talk about it with them. I had to talk about it with my therapist and work on it from a clinical angle, because it's a psychological thing, too." The MTV star is still recovering from what she calls a "monster eating disorder" but has found exercise and a healthy eating plan has helped her kick her ‘dark secretive’ behaviour.