Amanda Bynes Spotted For The First Time In Three Months Sporting Weight Gain And Cigarette

Amanda Bynes was spotted out and about on Sunday in West Hollywood. This was the first sighting of Bynes since she shared a car selfie three months ago, showing off her short hair. OK! Magazine reported on Monday that the 30-year-old Amanda Show star was almost unrecognizable as she sported a noticeable weight gain, as well as a cigarette, while she was out last weekend with her life coach.

Fans of Amanda Bynes were probably excited to get an update on how she’s doing after her string of bad luck almost three years ago. The last official update on Bynes was in February when she shared a photo of herself on social media in a car with a new haircut, saying “Hi everyone! I got a haircut! What do you think?” Of course, in April, the Easy A actress turned 30 and celebrated with friends at Six Flags in California. Fans immediately noticed Bynes, according to People Magazine, but no new photos were taken.

Twitter users and fellow parkgoers did tweet that they spotted Amanda Bynes at Six Flags, but the paparazzi must have been MIA for that public outing, because no new photos had surfaced prior to last Sunday. However, just before Bynes turned 30 on April 3, her lawyer, David Esquibias, gave an update to fans that the former Nickelodeon star was doing great, enjoying school, and thriving. This was good news for Amanda after months of legal problems starting in 2012 for everything from a DUI arrest, to possessing marijuana, to a mental health breakdown.

Bynes has been doing much better since she was released from the UCLA Medical Center in 2013 for treatment of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. A source close to Amanda told People Magazine in April that the actress was committed to school at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in Los Angeles and was planning for a new career in fashion after devoting much of her life to acting. Amanda Bynes became a child star in the late 1990s, starting with the Nickelodeon sketch comedy show All That.

The last time fans watched Bynes act was in 2010 on the American teen comedy film Easy A. Bynes hasn’t appeared on the small screen or the large screen since, but still managed to keep her loyal followers entertained on social media. Us Weekly Magazine put together a compilation of some of Amanda’s “craziest tweets” ever as she struggled with her mental health issues in 2013.

“I was born with a webbing in between my eyes. That was a birth defect that I had surgically removed!”

Bynes also tweeted to fans in April of 2013 that she suffered from an eating disorder, so she had a “hard time staying thin.” In fact, a close friend of Amanda’s said in an interview in July of 2013 that most of the star’s troubles stemmed from an obsession to be thin. In a Daily Mail report, Ana Rivera said that Amanda Bynes would constantly say she wanted to be 100 pounds and had weird eating habits.

“She told me she wanted to be 100 pounds. When she was in the film Love Wrecked, she had just got mononucleosis and lost a load of weight, and her mum told her she’d never looked better.

“She’d only eat turkey bacon. But she would eat candy in secret and had a big stash of candy in a cupboard.”

Rivera, who met Bynes in 2012 when the two lived in the same apartment building in New York, went on to say that Amanda claimed it was difficult to not want to be 100 pounds again, even though that was “too skinny for her.” Amanda also reportedly used to take the ADHD drug Adderall to stay thin, but apparently the former actress isn’t obsessed about not gaining weight anymore. The photos taken of Amanda Bynes on Sunday showed off a noticeable weight gain as she walked alongside her life coach in West Hollywood.

The Daily Mail reported that Bynes was dressed down and taking a cigarette break during the outing with her life coach. Bynes is reportedly often spotted with her life coach out in public, which is a good sign for the once-troubled actress, according to TMZ last year. In June, 2015, Amanda Bynes was photographed dining with her life coach at Craig’s in West Hollywood. Another good sign for Bynes, reported TMZ, is that she’s also apparently let go of her partying lifestyle, since she “had the blue plate special and left before sunset.”

[Photo by Jordan Strauss/AP Images]