Steps star Claire Richards previously revealed her anorexia battle after being told to lose weight by a music industry boss.
Mum-of-two Claire, 46, told how she was shockingly put on 900 calories a day. Before joining Steps, she was in a band called The Scan-Dolls – and that is where the problem started.
Speaking to Vicky Pattinson on her The Secret To podcast, Claire said: “They did it to all of us because we were all quite curvy girls. I was probably a [size] 10 or a 12 and wasn’t big at all.”
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Claire Richards was told to lose weight
She continued: “But in the music kind of world and at that time that whole Kate Moss, heroin-chic, was a thing and they wanted everyone to be really, really skinny… So we were all put on a diet. That diet was interesting because we were encouraged to eat fish fingers, peas and baked beans and have like a 900-calorie diet.”
She then joined Steps, and aged just 19, she claims she was told once again to lose weight.
Claire explained: “The audition for Steps was ’97 and by that time I had cut my hair really short, stupidly, and I was wearing this stripey catsuit which I wore in the video for Last Thing on my Mind. And I always used to tie a hoodie around my waist because I was really conscious of my bum because I thought I had a massive bum.”
She went on: “They sat me down, did my audition and they said: ‘Oh, we really like you. We want you to be in the band, but you’re going to have to lose weight.’
“It set me on a pathway of not really eating for four and a half years.”
Claire’s anorexia battle
She was impacted mentally by what was said to her, and it affected her for years after.
“And I think I probably was anorexic,” she admitted. “You know, I managed to kind of stop what I was doing to myself but that went from not eating at all, to overeating.”
Claire, who is on Cooking With The Stars this week (July 22), overcame her disordered eating.
Speaking on Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Spinning Plates podcast in 2022, she said: “I struggle every day. And I’ve managed to maintain a good size now for a long time. But it’s a battle every day and people just don’t understand that psychological side of it generally.”
Read more: Claire Richards on doctor’s warning over her weight: ‘It was causing a lot of problems’
Cooking With The Stars is on ITV weekdays at 2pm.
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