Every few months a photo of Tami Roman lands online, and the comment section turns into a clinic run by strangers. “Too thin.” “Is she sick?” “Somebody check on her.” I have read those threads for years, and what strikes me is how rarely anyone stops to listen to the one person who has actually explained it. Roman, the Basketball Wives star who first turned up on The Real World: Los Angeles in 1993, told her own story on national television in November 2021. It is worth hearing in her words, not ours.
The day a mirror became the enemy
Guest hosting The Real, Roman said she lives with body dysmorphic disorder and that it started with one afternoon at a New York modeling agency when she was 13. “I was tall, I was 5’9, I was thin,” she said. “5’9, less than 120 pounds. Assuredly they’re going to sign me.” Instead, she said, a woman at the agency “stood me in front of a mirror” and listed the flaws: back folds, fat over her knees, her chin, her chest.
“I went home that night and from that moment, every time I looked at myself in the mirror, I could find something wrong with myself,” Roman said. She has described the condition the same way doctors do: it can be hereditary, genetic, or come “from a negative experience where your self-image has been annihilated.”
My read: the most chilling detail is not the list of “flaws.” It is that an adult said it to a 13-year-old as professional advice, and the industry called it scouting.
What she did to her body, in her own words
Roman did not soften the next part. “I started abusing laxatives, I started not eating, I started throwing up, I started doing everything that I could think of to do to be as skinny as I could possibly be,” she said on The Real. She added a detail that reframes a whole era of reality TV: “That’s why I got my mouth wired in 1993. To be skinny when I was already skinny.”
The earlier version of this page put a diagnosis in its headline. Roman never said “anorexia,” and neither should we. What she described is body dysmorphic disorder and years of disordered habits around food, and that is exactly how far the record goes. (Editors who guess diagnoses from photos are the reason this paragraph exists.)
Why the comments make it worse
This is the part I wish every commenter would read twice. Roman explained that the remarks meant as concern land the opposite way. “Tami, you look too frail, Tami, you look like a bobblehead, Tami, you look skinny,” she listed. “In my mind, that goes, well I’m on the right track, I’m getting skinny. And then I don’t know when to stop.”
For someone with the disorder, she said, what others intend as a negative comment can read as a compliment: “my mind has such a warped sense of perception.” So the well-meaning “eat a sandwich” reply is not a public service. It is fuel.
Diabetes, and a weight that moves
On the same show Roman said: “Today at 50 years old, I’ve been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and my weight fluctuates with that.” She has talked about the diagnosis publicly since at least 2018, when she pushed back on an Instagram commenter who lectured her about smoking and drinking with diabetes. Her daughters, Jazz and Lyric, have also stepped into her comments over the years to answer people mocking her weight.
So when a new picture shows her slimmer or fuller than the last one, the honest explanation is the one she already gave: a chronic illness that affects weight, plus a disorder that distorts how she sees herself. Neither needs a stranger’s verdict. I would add one thing she did not say but the clip makes plain: talking about it on daytime TV, in front of a studio audience, took more nerve than any red carpet.
The earlier version of this article also repeated claims about diet pills and specific pound counts. We could not find Roman saying any of it, so it is gone.
Where she is now
Roman, born April 17, 1970, turned 56 this year and is still working: she is listed in the cast of the Lifetime movie Double Double Trouble (2026), and she remains one of the most recognizable faces from the Basketball Wives franchise. She has shared no new health update that we could verify, and we will not invent one.
Back to that comment section. Roman told us, on camera, what those comments do to her. The least the rest of us can do is take her at her word and keep our diagnoses to ourselves.
Sources
- Tami Roman on Instagram, October 2026
- The Real Daytime: “Tami Roman Reveals She Suffers from Body Dysmorphic Disorder: ‘My Self-Image Was Annihilated'” (YouTube, November 2021)
- Tami Roman on Instagram (@tamiroman)
- Black America Web: Tami Roman reveals she has had body dysmorphic disorder since she was 13 (November 20, 2021)
- Power 99: Tami Roman shares she suffers from body dysmorphic disorder (November 23, 2021)
- Atlanta Black Star: fans defend Tami Roman after comments on her weight (February 24, 2023)
- Atlanta Black Star: Tami Roman responds to a commenter about diabetes (July 17, 2018)
- Atlanta Black Star: Tami Roman’s daughter answers a troll (August 13, 2018)
