Melanie Chisholm is reflecting on overcoming the body image issues that plagued the end of her time in the hit girl group the Spice Girls.
“I was exercising more, eating less, getting smaller and smaller,” Chisholm, 52, recalled. The Times of London in a profile published on Saturday, January 24. “It was something very physical, very remarkable.”
Chisholm is perhaps best known as Sporty Spice from the seminal British girl band of the 1990s. The pop act eventually disbanded in 2000 as Chisholm, Victoria Beckham, Mel Brown, Emma Bunton i Halliwell is back all pursued solo careers in music, fashion and television.
“When you’ve been with each other for so long and your eating habits change, they’re aware. They tried to talk to me, but I wasn’t ready to listen,” Chisholm said. The Times of his former bandmates’ concern for his well-being. “(Then) I would come home, and it was just me. I was with my family in LA and I couldn’t get out of bed. I was crying and crying. I had started to have binge eating disorder, but I didn’t understand it.”
After navigating an eating disorder, Chisholm finally sought treatment to change her mindset.
“When I was pregnant with Scarlet, it was such a big moment,” she said of her 16-year-old daughter with ex Thomas Starr. “For the first time in my life, I was proud of my body. I was like, ‘Wow.'”
Chisholm has previously been open about her eating disorder struggles, which she attributed to her pursuit of perfectionism while in the Spice Girls.
“I’m putting all of that in my head now and I think that’s where a lot of my problems started,” Chisholm said during a 2020 appearance on BBC Radio 4. Desert Island Discs. “I had to be so strict with myself after that, in case I messed it up. What made it so devastating was how important I realized it was to me.”
Chisholm joined the girl group when she was 20, a generally impressionable time in a person’s life.
“I was a crazy moment,” she he recalled to the BBC Good Food in a 2016 interview. “I developed an eating disorder; I was in the spotlight, I was constantly being photographed, and I became self-conscious about my body image. I was in denial for a long time, but I always wanted to get better.”
Victoria Beckham is opening up about her struggles with an eating disorder and trying to control her weight. “I don’t know what I saw when I looked in the mirror,” Beckham, 51, says in her documentary series Victoria Beckham, available to stream on Netflix on Thursday, October 9. “Was he fat? Was he thin? I don’t know. (…)
Eventually, Chisholm found herself going to therapy helped her recover of her battle with eating disorders.
“I had talking therapies and holistic therapies, like acupuncture,” she noted at the time. “Sport was also very important to me.”
Since then, Chisholm has made sure to take care of her health and fitness, prioritizing her well-being.
“I love being fit and obviously to really push yourself you have to make sure you’re eating the right things,” she said. Good Food. “I like to think I have a healthy relationship with food now and I love to cook. We’re much more nutrition conscious these days. When I was a teenager, I didn’t know the difference between a protein and a carb. We need to realize again that we are what we eat.”
If you or someone you know suffers from an eating disorder, visit the National Eating Disorders Alliance website or call their hotline at (866) 662-1235. Text “ALLIANCE” to 741741 for free and 24/7 support.