I was so skinny it makes me sad to watch Strictly – I won’t let my child deprive herself like me, says Kristina Rhianoff
KRISTINA RIHANOFF felt a chill run down her spine as she placed her daughter’s dinner on the table.
The seven-year-old said: “I don’t want to eat the fries — I might be fat if I do.”
Hearing little Mila’s concern reminded the ex-Strictly Come Dancing professional of her own anxieties surrounding food.
Kristina, who is engaged to her former celebrity dance partner, Ben Cohen, says: “I don’t know where she picked that up from. We’d never speak about food and weight like that in our house. Maybe it was a TV show.”
Mila’s comments have now put Kristina, 46, on red alert.
She says: “As a mum, it’s a never-ending worry. There is so much on social media. She’s still too young to be on Instagram and I’m conscious about what she will be exposed to online. But she’s of a digital generation, so it’s inevitable.”
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Kristina relates to such weight worries. On the Strictly dance floor, she radiated confidence and good health.
But inside, she was desperately unhappy.
Despite being a size 6 and weighing 8st 11lb, Kristina was crippled by insecurities about her body.
She was convinced she was “fat” and found herself caught in a cycle of fad dieting to keep her weight down. She would almost faint as she rehearsed her tough routines.
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And she claims her fellow Strictly pros had similar issues around their weight.
“Watching myself on the show, seeing myself next to beautiful girls like Natalie Lowe and Iveta Lukosiute, who were super slim and super tall, I always felt I needed to be thinner,” says 5ft 5in Kristina.
“I felt so inadequate and fat. In my head I needed to lose weight and was always finding ways to have less calories.
“But the crazy thing is, I was in the best shape possible. Before Strictly I had never been a size 6 — I was naturally more a size 10.
“But it’s so intense and you work so hard that you do lose weight when you’re on the show. Even then, I couldn’t see it.”
Kristina, who was on Strictly between 2008 and 2015, says cruel comments from body-shaming trolls on social media fuelled her insecurities.
She recalls: “People would say, ‘Look at her shape, she shouldn’t be wearing a dress like that’, or ‘That looks totally wrong on her body’.”
“That would be so sad for me.
“I’d watch the videos from the show and it would all build up in my head.
“I would just see a fat person on screen.
“All the pros felt similar. A lot of them couldn’t stand watching themselves back.
“We’re teachers and choreographers and our eyes are trained on finding things to fix. Unfortunately we looked for errors in ourselves.
“A lot of the girls would get horrible comments too, similar to the trolling I got. They wouldn’t feel good enough either.
“Body image is important on Strictly. The show is all about the beautiful costumes and naturally you do think about how you look in those dresses.
“Looking back now, I feel so sad for myself. It wasn’t good, mentally, physically or emotionally.”
Desperate to lose weight from her tiny body, Kristina tried a variety of extreme diets, including juicing, no carbs, meal-replacement shakes and a protein-only diet, none of which would be recommended for a dancer on her feet for eight hours a day.
“I would feel faint,” she admits now.
“I felt like I was going to pass out during training. But you didn’t have the luxury of stopping because the cameras were rolling and you had to deliver a dance.
“I should have taken care of my nutrition better — it was my own fault. I should have thought more about me.”
Of all the diets she tried, there was one in particular she struggled with.
“The juicing diet was the worst of the worst,” Kristina says. “I felt hungry, I had a constant headache.
“I hated it and I’d never recommend it to anyone. I only lasted two days on that and I had to stop. Cutting out carbs was also hard because as a dancer, I needed them. I wasn’t having any at all. It was crazy, in hindsight.”
During her eight years on Strictly, Kristina never told her celeb partners she was struggling — not even former England rugby player Ben, 45, who she was paired with in 2013.
“It would have been tacky to have a conversation like that,” she says.
“It wouldn’t have been appropriate.”
Kristina left the show for good in 2015 and gave birth to Mila in 2016.
She says: “That was the turning point for me. Everything changed when I had Mila. Becoming a mum and understanding that I needed to take care of myself to be around my child for as long as I can put everything into perspective.
“I started to learn more and more about nutrition and I stopped worrying about my weight.
“I gained three dress sizes during pregnancy and I wasn’t one of those people who jumped from having a baby straight back into skinny jeans. In fact, I don’t think I’ll ever fit into them again. I can’t fit into any of my pre-pregnancy clothes now. And it’s fine.”
Kristina is now a size 10-12 and weighs 10st 3lb. She follows a plant-based diet, with the odd glass of rosé and bar of dark chocolate as a treat.
She is also a senior yoga teacher, having explored her love of it soon after Mila’s birth.
“I’d been practising yoga for a long time and I loved the physicality of it,” she says.
“And after Mila it was yoga that I wanted to do. It was safe, low impact, meditation. I fell in love with it again.
“Thanks to yoga I can look at myself now without judgment. This is who I am, this is my body.
“I’d rather be healthy than chasing a dream of being thin. Now I have a wellbeing studio, called Soo Yoga, in Northampton. I’m a senior yoga teacher and it’s truly the best thing I could’ve done.
“I’m happier and healthier. I love sitting down with the family for dinner now and not worrying about eating a potato for fear I’ll put weight on.”
Kristina's worries
But it is no surprise Kristina worries about Mila’s future, especially as her little girl looks set to follow in her footsteps.
“Mila loves ballroom dancing and I’m delighted by that,” says Kristina.
“She is a seasoned competitor already and she loves it.
“But of course there’s a worry about her being body conscious to the point she deprives herself like I did.”
As for the current series of Strictly, Kristina admits she struggles to watch it now, as it sparks her insecurities.
She says: “I watch it very rarely. Life is busy with the business and my family, but sometimes I’ll tune in. It’s always with mixed emotions.
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“I had many wonderful times there, but it does trigger those memories of how insecure I felt and it makes me so sad.
“I wish I had been so much kinder to myself back then. I wish I could go back and say to myself, ‘You know what, Kristina? You look great’.”