Teresa Palmer suffered from eating disorder orthorexia

Teresa Palmer has opened up about her battle with eating disorder orthorexia.

The 34-year-old Australian actress revealed during an appearance on the Mamamia Me Before You podcast that she battled the disorder, which is described as an obsession with proper or healthy eating, from 2009 to 2012.

Symptoms of orthorexia include compulsively checking ingredients lists, cutting out entire food groups and spending hours each day thinking about food one might be served, among others.

"I was incredibly clean with my eating, so I didn't have anorexia or bulimia, but I had something different, which is when you become so obsessed with the amount of calories you're putting into your body, everything had to be of the highest quality," Teresa explained.

"I wouldn't eat anything stripped of its nutritional value... It was exhausting, utterly exhausting, to log every calorie and to just be so overly conscious of the food I was putting into my body."

She explained her eating issues developed back in 2008 after an agent told her she needed to start working out more after paparazzi snapped pictures of her wearing a bikini.

"The scary thing is that I've always been such a small person," the Hacksaw Ridge actress added. "I look back on the photos that she's talking about and I was just so little still. Yes, I wasn't perfectly sculpted, but that really set off this huge whirlwind of unhealthy obsession surrounding food."

However, once Teresa became a mum to sons Bodhi, six, and Forest, three, and 15-month-old daughter Poet, with husband Mark Webber, she changed her relationship with food, and now feels "liberated from these judgements that I had surrounding my body".