Victoria Beckham says ‘so many women’ have messaged her about eating struggles

By Hannah Roberts, PA Senior Entertainment Reporter

Victoria Beckham has said “so many women” have messaged her since she opened up about her past struggles with an eating disorder in a new documentary series.

In her eponymous Netflix series, Beckham, 51, spoke about her relationship to food and said she became “very good at lying” as she battled an eating disorder.

The fashion designer, who rose to fame in pop super group the Spice Girls, told the Call Her Daddy podcast that she talked to her 14-year-old daughter Harper about her experience before the documentary was released earlier this month.

She said: “I’ve struggled with my weight since I was quite young. In the 90s I remember we didn’t know as much about food back then as we do now.

“It wasn’t so much of a conversation and I remember in the 90s, everybody was obsessed with fat free, fat free, fat free. And I remember being terrified to eat any fat, absolutely terrified…

“And so I think then going into the Spice Girls and having people talk about me so much and my weight… one minute I was ‘porky posh’, and then I was ‘skinny posh’, and it plays tricks with you.

“And I didn’t know what I saw when I looked in the mirror. I had no idea. You know, you lose all sense of reality, and it is so consuming, it is so tiring, and it takes over. It really takes over.”

Beckham said it was her husband, David Beckham, who helped her to have a healthier relationship with food and exercise.

She said: “David has always known that I’ve been very disciplined about the way that I eat, and I managed to turn myself… because I was too scared to talk to anyone, I didn’t feel that I could trust anyone at all, I managed to do it myself and turn an unhealthy obsession with food into a healthy relationship, meaning, understanding it’s about balance. It’s about being healthy, about working out.

“And David helped me do that. David was the one that changed my workout around, I was doing cardio, cardio, cardio. All I wanted to do was burn, burn, burn (calories).

“He was the one that encouraged me to start weight training, and we work out together. And so, he’s always been so supportive, and I was very disciplined in the way that I eat, I’m healthy, I’m disciplined, and it’s about balance.”

Asked about “speculation” surrounding her marriage, she added: “We’ve had so much thrown at us, and we’ve always just been there together and just ridden the storm, ridden the damn storm.”

In David’s documentary, titled Beckham, the Spice Girl addressed speculation that her husband allegedly had an affair while he was playing for Real Madrid in 2003, and said it was “100%” the hardest time in their marriage.

She said: “But you know, just lastly on the eating thing, what is interesting is, I’ve had so many women message me, come up to me after seeing the documentary, and say how they can relate.

“I’ve talked to Harper about it, obviously, because she’s obviously seeing the documentary, and little girls still obsess over food.

“It’s still a big conversation at school, and I think that if my experience with it and my story can help anyone or encourage anyone to talk, that’s another really good reason to have done this.”

She added: “I just spent a bit of time talking to her (Harper) about it so she could understand. When you have an eating disorder, it makes you miserable, it is sad, it is lonely, it is all-consuming.

“I was present for many years, but not truly present. And that’s really tough, and you just got to talk about it.”