Candace Cameron Bure Talks Crash Diet, Passing Out & Losing 20 Pounds on ‘Full House’

Candace Cameron Bure has been opening up about her time on Full House and the issues she faced as a child actress, particularly when it came to storylines about her weight.

The actress, who played eldest daughter D.J. Tanner on Full House from the age of 11 to 19, appeared on the Pod Meets World podcast on Monday, August 12, where she was asked by host Danielle Fishel if she ever had an episode written about her weight.

“I had lost, like, 20 pounds from the end of one season to another,” Bure recalled. “I came in losing 20 pounds, but they thought it was so great, and they were like, ‘Oh, on the opening titles, why don’t we have you on an exercise bike, just to promote that.’ And looking back, I don’t think that was bad. I really put a lot of hard work and effort into losing 20 pounds.”

However, in the season before that, Bure remembered “I had that episode where it was like, Kimmy (Andrea Barber) and I were going to a pool party, and I didn’t want to put a bathing suit on, so I did a crash diet to try to lose weight in a week so I wouldn’t feel bad about myself in a bathing suit, and then passed out at the gym.”

She continued, “And those are things that many of us struggle with. But yeah, you know, you play it out on television, and sometimes it’s like… okay.”

Jodie Sweetin, Mary-Kate Olsen, Bob Saget, Candace Cameron Bure; Bob D’Amico /© ABC /Courtesy Everett Collection

Bure, who later reprised her role as D.J. Tanner for the Netflix reboot Fuller House, explained that the writers had asked her and her parents if she was comfortable doing the pool party episode ahead of time.

“I was like, ‘Yeah, sure,’ but when you’re in it and doing it, it feels a little awkward,” she added.

Fishel had asked the question because she remembered how she and her former co-star Will Friedle had filmed episodes about their weight on Boy Meets World.

“I remember when they called me into the office to tell me they were going to, it wasn’t really like they asked,” Fishel shared. “They just kind of said, ‘You know, we want you to know. Obviously you guys have gained a little bit of weight, so we’re going to write an episode about it, and we just wanted you to know. And here’s what it’s going to be. It’s going to be really funny.'”

Fishel said Friedel was cool with it at the time but “I know now he was very insecure and it was really painful and powerful for him, but I didn’t know that.”

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She added, “I had been aware that I had gained weight, but I was still, you know, I was a size four. And so I remember thinking, ‘Wow, these people think I’ve gained enough weight [that] we have to write an entire episode about my weight gain.'”

Bure stated that her weight became more of a talking point when she was going through puberty on the show, at around the age of 15 or 16.

“You know, I was always the chubby-cheeked girl. And a lot of people loved that I was,” she explained. “And I can look back and go, like, ‘I was just a normal, average girl.’ And yet, you meet people, and they’re always like, ‘You’re so much thinner in person!’… And you’re just like, ‘Is that all people see? Do they just see my chubby cheeks?'”

She concluded, “I just always want to go back and I just wanna hug 15-year-old Candace and go, ‘It’s okay. Don’t listen to anyone.'”