Lanning reveals secret struggle ‘UNHEALTHY’ FOOD & EXERCISE REGIMEN
For years, it was the best-kept secret in Australian cricket – something was weighing on Meg Lanning’s young shoulders and not even her teammates knew what it was.
In 2022, Australia’s batting great took a sabbatical from the game for personal reasons and worked in a coffee shop. In 2023, she withdrew from an Ashes tour of England for unexplained medical reasons just before the team left home.
The mystery is a mystery no more. Lanning, who captained Australia with incredible poise and success for a decade from age 21, has decided to share her story. She hopes it will make others open up and feel the comfort she has felt talking about her challenges with people “even if they don’t have the answers”.
The self-confessed one-time “closed book’’, who retired last year at just 32, has opened up to Fox Cricket’s Mark Howard in a Howie Games podcast to reveal the anxieties she kept far away from public view, not simply from fans but teammates and even her family.
It’s a tale without a villain, a sensitive story of what can happen when the grind of relentless pressure inside the sporting bubble tilts a young life off its axis.
“I was in denial,’’ she said at least three times to Howard.
“I just became a different person, pretty hard to be around I’d say. I never really opened up to many people. I was a very closed book. I always pretended or made it look everything was fine when it probably wasn’t.’’
Lanning, whose nickname Megastar befits her status as one of women’s cricket’s greatest batters, declined to call her condition an eating disorder, but says she had an
“unhealthy relationship with food and exercise’’.
The short story is that Lanning, seeking an escape from the pressures of the cricket bubble, sought solace and control in running up to 90km a week but did not eat enough food to fuel her “obsession’’.
She lost 7kg, struggled concentrate, engage with people or even just sleep at night.
“I dreaded night time because I knew I would go to bed and not be able to sleep,” she said. “That would make me so mad. I would just get more angry with myself. If you can’t sleep, you can’t do anything.’’
Incredibly, she kept scoring piles of runs for Australia.
Lanning is still not sure that was a good thing because it to only fuelled her belief she was fine when she actually wasn’t. The legend of her batting feats will only grow given the nowrevealed mental challenges she faced in the last few years of her career.
“I was over-exercising and under fuelling,” she said. “I got to the point where I was doing about 85-90ks a week. I was in denial. It became a bit of ‘I am going to show you’ sort of thing. “It sort of just spiralled. I was not in a place to be able to go on tour and play cricket and give the commitment levels required for that Ashes series mentally and physically. I am naturally fine spending time with myself but there were very few people who I would want to engage with. I would get really snappy – real moody – if anyone asked anything.
“I got down to 57kg from 64kg. It wasn’t ridiculous (but it was) significant. The ratios were out of whack. I did not realise (it effected) my ability to concentrate. I didn’t really want to see other people. I disengaged a lot from friends and family. It (the running) became a bit of an obsession.”
Asked whether her teammates were fully aware of her plight, Lanning said: “I think they knew something was up.
“I couldn’t see anything in my appearance but (others) could see it. And everything that comes with it.
“You become grumpy. Not talking to many people. Not being able to concentrate. Not sleeping. Your head just goes round and round and it’s not a nice place to be.’’