FREDDIE FACES HIS FEARS OVER EATING DISORDER
ACHINGLY honest and quite a shocking insight, Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff opens up about his secret struggle with bulimia. “This is such a hard thing to admit,” he says, clearly nervous, as he is interviewed about living with the eating disorder, which is characterised by bingeing food and then purging.
“Every time I eat, I feel some sort of guilt and I worry about food and putting on weight,” he admits.
Freddie says it was jibes in the press about his weight as a 20-year-old cricketer that sparked his bulimia.
“It was horrible and that’s when I started being sick after meals,” he says.
Freddie, 42, rose to fame in the early 2000s as one of the most gifted cricketers of his generation.
Today he’s a popular presenter, known for his dare-devil stunts on
BBC’s Top Gear and boyish banter on Sky’s
A League Of Their Own.
But throughout his 20 years in the limelight, Freddie has been living with bulimia and never spoke out or sought help. “For years I’ve managed to keep it hidden,” he says. “And apart from my own experience, I
Freddie in the know nothing about
Lancashire cricket it.”
team circa 1998 Meeting specialists and other young men with eating disorders, Freddie sets about investigating his condition, dispelling the stereotype that it is an illness that “only teenage girls get”. Ultimately, Freddie bravely faces his own fears and confronts whether he needs professional treatment to tackle his disorder once and for all.