Steps star Claire Richards has revealed her anorexia battle after being told to lose weight by a music industry boss.
Mum-of-two Claire, 45, 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 has a new album out on August 25, overcame her disordered eating.
Speaking on Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Spinning Plates podcast last year, 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’
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