Grace Wong Suffered Eating Disorder During “Gourmet Secret Agent”

The past ten years hasn’t been easy for Grace Wong (王君馨), who made her debut through the 2007 Miss Hong Kong Pageant, where she won first runner-up. The triple-winning MHK veteran once lost her sense of direction, and turned to binge eating to calm down her stress. It was a life lesson.

“After winning Miss Hong Kong, I was immediately put into Strictly Come Dancing <舞動奇蹟> before I even started my MHK duties,” said Grace. “I thought everything would be smooth from there. Maybe God saw how prideful I was starting to get.”

In 2011, Grace hosted the food program Gourmet Secret Agent V <日日有食神V>. Grace, who was raised in New York, struggled with describing the different tastes of food in Cantonese. “I didn’t know how to use the 50 different ways to describe how delicious that fish was,” said Grace. “I don’t know how to do that even now. In the past I didn’t know what it meant to be dan ngah (bouncy on the teeth) or lyun wat (tender and smooth). It was hard. I could only describe it in my own words.”

For that, Grace’s vocabulary range was limited to only saying “very delicious” on the program, which led to criticism on her performance. “I would sound so dramatic about it. My voice was so shrill. Now, I’m learning to lower my voice when I speak.”

The stress of having to host a program was mentally exhausting, and she succumbed to binge eating. “I felt so fake. As people spoke out their criticism of me, all I could do was smile and tell them that I’ll improve next time. I wasn’t happy inside. I felt uncomfortable.”

To control her stress, she resorted to eating—a lot. “I wouldn’t eat when I’m out, but once I get back home, I would eat nonstop. I thought I could control what I eat, but the food controlled me. This lasted for about a year.”

Grace, who is naturally skinny, weighed 127 pounds that year, her heaviest weight. “At 5 foot 6, that is not a heavy weight at all, but because I’m in this industry, that’s considered fat.”

When she was brought back to her church through close friends Candice Chiu (趙希洛) and Janet Chow (周家蔚), she was able to reconnect with her spirituality and reconsider her values.

“After my debut, I was brought into such a colorful world. It really captivates you. All you see are people who are in the top of the society, and you see things you’ve never seen before. After [Gourmet], the jobs stopped coming. When you have no money, you have no friends, and you wouldn’t want to go out to socialize. If people would still be willing to help you during this time, you would know who would be there for you. It was really during that time when everything clicked to me.”

On-and-Off Relationship with Daniel

Grace shared that she once had a pretty bad breakup with Daniel, who she dated for 11 years and is now married to.

“We broke up because of his jealousy. When we were both still in America, we were already three hours apart. When I went to Hong Kong for an exchange, I met a lot of friends there, and would share the pictures I took with my male friends on social media. He would always ask me so many questions about them. Since that trust was not there anymore, how could we go on? That’s why we broke up.”

Grace did have pursuers during their breakup, but her feelings toward Daniel were special. “I always left a part of my heart for him, so I never dated anyone else.”

Source: HK01.com

This article is written by Addy for JayneStars.com.

Responses

  1. 126 lbs for a 5’6!!!!! man I’m jealous! But yes in HK standard, probably consider fat.. just so wrong!

    1. @happybi The characters she plays are always seductive and leave very little to imagination so she needs to stay in slim shape. If she plays other characters, she would have more clothes to cover up any excess.

    1. @hannah Maybe he just cares a lot and that’s why he was jealous. They’ve lasted more than a decade and he wouldn’t have married her if he had a problem with her being an actress, which has been Grace’s career for a pretty long time.

      1. @linvin8 Caring and jealous are two different things. Jealousy is evil and has negative mindset. Reasoning it because he “cared too much” is the same as “blame the victim.” Using an excuse to cover up the bad. Like saying, oh he beats her because he loves her too much and doesn’t want to lose her. The way she described, it’s jealousy. He envied her social life without him and wanted what she had. That’s jealousy. If it’s caring, he would had been more worry about her weight, ask about her stress, encourage her she’ll do fine, etc. All these are bygones anyways, since they’re married now. Hope he changed to caring like you said. Else she’ll end up quitting or they getting a divorce.

        Anyways, 127 lbs for 5’6″ is about right weight! HK entertainment is savage if that’s fat O_O

        I remembered hating her voice and what appeared to be fake personality bc of her limited Canto vocabulary, lol. She’s doing better though. Good on her!

      2. @jjwong
        Jealousy is not healthy for a relationship but we must read the situation. They were having a long distance relationship so if there wasn’t some jealousy it wouldn’t be normal. I think we would be the same if we were in his shoes.

      3. @jimmyszeto I was in long distance relationship. I was sad and depress that I wasn’t there to go out, social with friends, plaster all over social media and be there with them. I wasn’t “jealous,” like wishing they not having a social life, being with friends and having a good time. And that’s the connotation for “jealous.”

        Again, it’s a moot point now they’re married and staying close. Thought I saw something about he moving to HK for her?

      4. @jjwong some jealousy is healthy because it shows that you care and are concerned over your partner. after all, if someone never cared about whether their partner will get stolen, I’m not sure how much love there is. not to say that it’s impossible to never be jealous, but I’ve never seen it irl.

        grace is a celebrity, hanging out with the opposite gender and filming with them constantly. if I were her beau, I think I would be worried and jealous too. not jealous that she has an active social life, but jealous that she’s hanging out with other guys not me. likewise, if my bf goes and hang out with numerous women on the daily, I would be wary and insanely insecure, esp if we’re in a ldr

  2. She is very very skinny now. Too skinny. 126 is in fact still skinny. Is HK’s ideal weight for women is below 100?

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