Nadia Sawalha has a binge-eating disorder.
The ‘Loose Women’ panellist has admitted she’s been attending Overeaters Anonymous for the past few years to help stamp out her bad food habits after she realised she was using calorific grub to hide her true emotions.
She explained: "For years, right from a child, I was a compulsive eater … I’m a very happy person, I had a very happy childhood and I love my life but I also had a long period of my life where my eating was out of control. I ate to shut up things that I didn’t want to feel."
The 51-year-old presenter had such a battle with food that she’d even consider swiping rotten pieces of leftovers out of the bin after her family had polished up their dinner.
She said: "I remember when I used to steal money from my lovely dad’s pockets and go and buy a carrier bag of sweets and biscuits. I wasn’t hungry, I just wanted to calm me down. "I used to scrape things into the rubbish and then pour washing up liquid over it so I couldn’t eat it."
However, the curly-haired beauty turned to the aid group after stumbling upon it while visiting her husband Mark Adderley, whom she married in 2002, in rehab and has now managed to carve a positive relationship with food.
Speaking on the lunchtime show, she said: "I’ve spoken before about my amazing husband, who has been sober for 12 years after being an alcoholic, and when he went to the priory, I also, as a family member, had to go in regularly and I started going to these meetings and then I discovered that what I was doing was actually not the norm.
"I started going to Overeaters Anonymous … and I am very different about my food now than i was when I was a young person. Food is there to nourish me, I love to cook, I love to eat but I no longer eat to shut up my feelings."
Nadia Sawalha has binge-eating disorder
