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Portia's big acting break came when she landed a role on the hit TV series Ally McBeal. Portia says it should have been the best day of her life, but at the time, she felt deeply insecure and undeserving of the job.

After her first day on the set of Ally McBeal, Portia says she met her brother at a Mexican restaurant and ate "practically everything on the menu." Afterward, she sat alone in her car and threw up her entire meal—plus the food she binged on during a post-dinner trip to 7-Eleven.

"I hated purging. It was punishment that I couldn't stick to a diet," she says. "I hated binging, [but] binging momentarily gave me relief, because I'd been starving, really. Psychologically, I just wanted to fill the void. But the purging, the purging made me feel more pathetic than just having failed yet another diet."