Mel C admits she was a ‘functioning anorexic’ during Spice Girls fame
MEL C, the pop star, ate only fruit and vegetables while she was a “functioning anorexic” during the height of her Spice Girls fame, she has disclosed.
The singer, whose real name is Melanie Chisholm, also told of the depression for which she was treated following the group’s break-up and which left her feeling as if she “couldn’t cope”.
In the latest edition of Bryony Gordon’s Mad World podcast for The Telegraph, the 43-year-old described life inside the girl group as “a fantasy”, albeit one which would eventually lead to her breakdown.
She said: “What happened with the Spice Girls, it’s something that completely turns your life upside-down.
“And it was a fantasy, it was a fairytale, it was something that I’d always wanted as long as I’d remembered.
“I think when you’re young and you have these dreams and aspirations you don’t really think of the negatives, and everything has a negative.
“So that all ended up in me not eating properly, and exercising obsessively because I thought I had to be a certain way to be deserving of every- thing that was happening to me. I didn’t eat carbs, didn’t eat protein. For a few years I was living on fruit and vegetables. I was a functioning anorexic. I was so concerned and obsessed with the eating side of things that I had no clue that I was depressed.”
Chisholm described how she first sought medical help for her depression at the turn of the millennium.
She explained how she was moved to seek help after she found herself “crying a lot”, “struggling to get out of bed” and “sneaking off to binge”.
When her GP diagnosed depression, Chisholm said: “I felt so relieved, because I just thought, ‘Oh my God, it’s got a name. I can be helped’. It was such a relief to me.”