Nadia Sawalha confesses attending Overeaters Anonymous was her ‘lifeline’ and comments on the pressure to look good at stage school
After battling with food for years, the mum-of-two has learned to embrace her wobbly bits and cellulite
“I'VE been messed up about my looks since I was small. It wasn’t my parents’ fault – they didn’t talk about body image – it was my Jordanian extended family.
I spent a lot of time with them, and they would constantly talk about weight while overfeeding me.
‘Have another cake, but don’t get fat,’ they would say. I spent a lifetime trying to undo those patterns, and that’s why I am so conscious of it with my own children – I never use food as a reward.
When I went to stage school aged 12, the pressure to look good was horrendous – we would even be weighed in front of each other.
Looking back I had the perfect figure, but I still restricted myself to 800 calories a day, then I would crash and overeat. It really messed up my metabolism. I didn’t get a grip on my bad eating patterns until I was in my late 30s.
It was incredibly powerful. After that I went every single day for a month, then weekly and now I pop in and out when I need. Like AA, you follow a 12-step program.
It’s quite complicated, but it makes you pause and think why you’re eating what you are and how it’s going to make you feel afterwards.
It completely changed the way I thought about food and without it I would have become fatter and fatter, or thinner and thinner.
It gave me tools for life. These days, when I look in the mirror I can actually find nice things to say about myself. This incredible body of mine grew two children, ran two marathons and works hard every day.
That said, when I stepped on to the set of this photo shoot and stood there in front of Bryan Adams in nothing but my Marks & Spencer bra and BHS knickers, I wanted the floor to swallow me up! I only got through it by thinking of my daughters.
My eldest, Maddie, is gorgeous, but she’s always so down about her looks. Her generation is the first to deal with the effects of social media and I always remind her that who you are as a person, and not your size, is what’s important.
When I look at these photos I think: ‘Yes, I’ve got a saggy belly and cellulite, but so the f**k what?!’”
Loose Women Body Stories launches 2nd May at 12.30pm on ITV.