‘Every time I ate I’d be in pain’

As former Shortland Street actress Claire Chitham was becoming a household name on TV, in her private life she was struggling with a painful, lifechanging illness impacted by what she was – orwasn’t – eating.

Chitham reveals her evolving relationshipwith food in an episode of Being Human, a Stuff video series hosted by Antonia Prebble that examines some of the fundamental parts of the human condition: sleep, fear, love, food and happiness.

Alongside journalist Bernard Hickey, Chitham tells Prebble her Crohn’s diagnosis and the formative years she spent on television made her re-evaluate the way she feels about food.

‘‘Fundamentally, I love food,’’ she says. ‘‘I call myself a foodie in the sense that I love the culture that we now have around dining andwhat we can do with food.’’

Despite her culinary passion, the star who first appeared on TV as Shortland Street’s Waverly Wilson at 16, says she has had a ‘‘very rollercoaster relationship’’ with food for most of her life.

She was just 12when diagnosed with Crohn’s, a condition that causes swelling, thickening and inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract, often concentrated in the small bowel and colon.

For the actress, who has gone on to star in shows including Fresh Eggs, Power Rangers, and Outrageous Fortune, that meant every time she ate, she was in pain.

The cause of Crohn’s is still unknown, although there may be a hereditary link; one in four peoplewith the disease also have a relative with Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis.

Because the bowel is responsible for absorbing the food and liquidswe eat and drink, if it becomes inflamed with Crohn’s disease, normal absorption doesn’t happen.

Chitham was hospitalised because of her illness when she was 20 and came close to having a section of her bowel removed.

‘‘My changing relationship with food and health was [because of] illness,’’ she says.

‘‘Before the hospitalisation, I

‘‘I lost a lot of weight but I linked that weight loss to pain and to bad times.’’ Claire Chitham, above

had lost a lot of weight. I wasn’t eating because every time I ate, [I] had crippling cramping and internal pain,’’ she says.

‘‘So I got anaemic. And so, everything’s going downhill and also because of that, I lost a lot of weight but I linked that weight loss to pain and to bad times.’’

That scary moment encouraged Chitham to start taking a keener interest in what she was putting into her body.

‘‘It wasn’t until I was about 20 when I was hospitalised that I actually started to care about my longevity, and my diet and my health and the rest of it.

‘‘That’s probably when I started to educate myself around food.’’

But it was around this same time, when she was one of the biggest, most beloved stars of Shortland Street, that Chitham’s relationship with food – and her own self-image – was challenged in a different way, thanks to the microscope of public opinion.

‘‘My relationship with my imagewas deeply affected by it, in the sense that your criticism levels are just off the chart. And I think again it’s all about comparison.

‘‘I was working on screen alongside Ange Bloomfield who’s tiny! She’s a dear friend of mine, but you can’t compare me – who is 5ft 8 – to her, who’s not. But I did.’’

The public comparisons came at a time Chitham was taking a course of steroids to help bring her Crohn’s disease under control. The medication often made her face look swollen and puffy.

Now, with her condition manageable, and some perspective, Chitham can look back and see the young woman away from the camera.

‘‘And so, 20 years later, I look back at some of that stuff and go, ‘Oh my God, I was really slender and tall and I’m curvy’ and I look at all the positives.

‘‘But I didn’t see them at the time and I think that’s one of the biggest hurdles and things that I think needs to shift.’’