Melanie Chisholm is reflecting on overcoming the body images issues that overwhelmed the end of her time in the hit girl group Spice Girls.
“I was exercising more, eating less, getting smaller and smaller,” Chisholm, 52, recalled to The Times of London in a profile published Saturday, January 24. “It was a very physical thing, very noticeable.”
Chisholm is perhaps best known as Sporty Spice from the seminal British girl band of the 1990s. The pop act ultimately disbanded in 2000 as Chisholm, Victoria Beckham, Mel Brown, Emma Bunton and Geri Halliwell all pursued solo careers in music, fashion and television.
“When you’re with each other for so much time and your eating habits change, they’re aware. They did try to speak to me, but I wasn’t ready to hear it,” Chisholm told The Times of her former bandmates’ concern for her wellbeing. “[Then,] I’d come home, and it was just me. I was with my family in L.A. and I couldn’t get out of bed. I was crying and crying. I’d started having a binge-eating disorder, but I didn’t understand it.”
After navigating an eating disorder, Chisholm eventually sought treatment to change her mindset.
“When I was pregnant with Scarlet, that was such a huge 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 candid about her eating disorder struggles, which she attributed to her pursuit of perfectionism while in the Spice Girls.
“I am putting this all together in my head now and I think that is where the start of a lot of my problems was,” Chisholm said during a 2020 appearance on BBC Radio 4’s 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 usually impressionable time in an individual’s life.
“iI was an insane time,” she recalled to the BBC’s Good Food in a 2016 interview. “I developed an eating disorder; I was in the spotlight, being photographed constantly, and I started to become self-conscious of my body image. I was in denial for a long time but I always wanted to get better.”
Eventually, Chisholm found going to therapy helped her recover from her eating disorder battle.
“I had talking therapies and holistic therapies, like acupuncture,” she noted at the time. “Sport became really important to me, too.”
Chisholm has since made sure to take care of her health and fitness, prioritizing her wellness.
“I love to be physically fit and, obviously, to really push yourself, you have to make sure you eat the right things,” she said on Good Food. “I like to think I have a healthy relationship with food now, and I love to cook. We’re so much more aware of nutrition nowadays. When I was a teenager, I didn’t know the difference between a protein and a carb. We need to get back to realizing that we are what we eat.”
If you or someone you know struggles with an eating disorder, visit the National Alliance for Eating Disorders website or call their hotline at (866) 662-1235. Text “ALLIANCE” to 741741 for free, 24/7 support.
