Like many stars who were thrust into the spotlight because of reality television, Kristin Cavallari has had her ups and downs, and a lot of them have been caught in camera and open to public criticism. Now she has told her story in her new book, “Balancing in Heels.” She includes all kinds of details about her time on MTV’s Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County, her “damaging” eating habits and her life now as a mother to three and wife to NFL quarterback Jay Cutler. She has always been one of the most vocal about the “reality” of Laguna Beach, exposing the lies of the show, and her book is no different. Check out 8 of the most shocking revelations from Kristin Cavallari’s “Balancing in Heels.”
8. Struggles With Food
After becoming famous as a teenager, Kristin Cavallari was faced with the criticisms and bullying about her looks and weight from the public as many in the public eye do, and admits this affected her severely. She became sucked into the world of diets and fads, “Beyond the food itself, my eating habits were equally damaging. I would be super strict for 5 days, then binge eat for 2. During the week, I tried to stay around 1800 calories a day and would be hungry and unsatisfied most of the time. Then the weekend came, it was a free-for-all.” She explained that after getting pregnant for the first time with son Camden, she changed her ways and while she eliminates many things from her diet, she now has a healthy and regular diet.
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7. Meeting Jay
Following the fame of Laguna Beach, Kristin, along with some of the other cast were lucky enough to keep their fame going with a new show —The Hills. She has remained in the spotlight too as the wife of Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler, and many have always wondered how the two even got together in the first place, which she finally explains was all thanks to her reality show fame. “When I was in the middle of filming The Hills, I got a phone call from my publicist that Jay Cutler wanted to fly me to Chicago and take me on a date.” Initally she refused because of a bad experience she had with a different Chicago athlete, but she ended up reconsidering Jay’s offer. “A year later, a year in which I grew up a lot and felt serious about meeting a good man… I called up my publicist and got us family passes to meet Jay after the game.” Their relationship was red hot from that moment on with Cavallari describing it as a “swift and intense romance.”
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6. Calling Off the Wedding
As many are well aware, Kristin and Jay were engaged only eight months after dating, but only three months after that they announced that the wedding was off, shocking many. In the book, she explains the feelings that were behind that decision and the fact that things needed to change before she dove into a marriage. “I always go after what I want in life, with men or otherwise, and I never settle. If something doesn’t feel right, I act on it. It’s just who I’ve always been. And at that moment, something wasn’t right. A few things needed to change, and I knew the only way Jay would see how serious I was, was if I ended the relationship.” She explained that while they were broken up, they remained friends and talking and she was “dying inside” the whole time but her biggest issue was Jay expected her to be a stay-at-home mom and she didn’t want that. “If I stayed at home, I wouldn’t be happy and would probably end up resenting Jay for it.”
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5. Saving the Relationship
Although she wanted things to change, they both knew they wanted to be together so they salvaged their relationship by going to therapy together. “I credit [our therapist] for saving our relationship. She opened up our eyes to the other person’s perspective and gave us great tools for communication… we still periodically see her to this day.” The pair reconciled in January 2012 and were married in June 2013 and are happy parents to Camden, 3, Jaxon, 22 months, and Saylor, 3 months.
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4. Unfortunate Accident
Everyone has their wedding day horror stories, and although they hit a rough patch, Kristin and Jay finally arrived at their wedding day on June 8, 2013, but not without some more difficulty. The morning of her wedding, Kristin was playing on the floor with the kids and dogs when one of her dogs accidentally bit her on the face. “Brando bit me right on the eye,” she wrote in her book. Luckily her makeup artist came to her rescue and glued her cuts closed, and was able to cover it up.
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3. Laguna Beach Manipulation
Kristin, as mentioned, has spoken out about the fake aspects of Laguna Beach which was supposed to show their real lives, and she discusses it in her book as well saying that the producers of the show manipulated her and put her in certain situations because they knew she “didn’t know how to deal with” or “handle my emotions.” So while her negative and dramatic reactions were real, the situation to elicit the emotions was forced. “I was only 17! I had some anger stored up from my parents’ divorce and my new stepfamilies, which the producers saw. They put me in situations where they knew I would react. I was a fighter back then: When I felt threatened, I acted. So when I felt the producers were trying to break up my relationship, I ended up becoming exactly what they wanted from the get-go…When I acted out, they won.”
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2. Kristin and Stephen
In the years since Laguna Beach aired, there have been rumors and reveals that many of the relationships on the show weren’t real at all, and were again set up by the producers to create drama. While that is true for some, Kristin set the record straight about the authenticity of her relationship with Stephen Colletti at the time. “He was my entire world, and we loved hard and fought hard,” adding again the show and producers got in the way. “Surprisingly, the producers had a bigger effect, as they controlled and mapped our lives more than we were aware. One of the most hurtful things they did was pressure Stephen to spend time with another girl from our show, Lauren, while he and I were dating.” The producers got the drama and entertainment they wanted for the show, but it really did hurt Cavallari and she said added to her trust issues.
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1. The Reality of Laguna Beach
She again stated that for reality TV, not a whole lot was real about Laguna Beach, but as a bunch of teenagers, they all got wrapped up in it. “There was certainly a good deal to the show that wasn’t ‘real,’ but as kids we got caught up in it anyway. It was easy to go along with made-up situations… to keep things interesting, words were dubbed, scenes filmed months apart were shown in the same episode as though they were concurrent, and phone calls were faked (I would literally be on the phone with no one or sometimes with a producer).
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