Victoria Beckham kicked it into sporty spice mode — with the help of David Beckham.
The fashion designer, 51, opened up about her past eating disorder and how her other half was the one who reshaped her workouts.
“I’d struggled with my weight since I was quite young,” Victoria revealed while on the Call Her Daddy podcast Wednesday.
“We didn’t know as much about food back then as we do now. It wasn’t so much 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.”
One incident in particular stuck with the Spice Girls member.
“I remember my mom saying to me, ‘Gosh, you could walk around the supermarket and know the calorie count and the fat count of pretty much anything in the supermarket,’” Victoria explained. “So I was really mindful when I was growing up and that was confusing enough for me. And so I think then going into the Spice Girls and having people talk about me so much and my weight, and as you said one minute I was Porky Posh and then I was Skinny Posh. And it plays tricks with you.”
The Spice Girls first formed in 1994 and also included Mel B, Geri Halliwell, Melanie C and Emma Bunton. Halliwell, 53, left the group in 1998, which led to a hiatus in late 2000.
The band split for good in 2001.
The comments about her weight while in the spotlight greatly impacted Victoria.
“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,” she confessed.
Months after giving birth to Brooklyn in 1999, Victoria was weighed on live television on the British show “TFI Friday.”
The star said she was “very self-conscious.”
“I mean, Brooklyn was six months old and I was asked to stand on scales. It was the only part of the documentary that we were asked to not include, but you can Google it and you can see me literally getting up and standing. I mean, it was so humiliating. David was there, he was in the audience, and the camera shifts to him and he looks a little horrified as well. But back in the day, those things were acceptable.”
“There is that old school thought process of how quick do you bounce back to your weight after having a baby,” continued Victoria. “I mean, after I had Brooklyn, I was on the front page of a newspaper a few days afterwards and there were arrows pointing to every single part of my body and where I had to lose the weight, every single part. And you know, again, it’s a very, very different world now.”
And while Victoria struggled with an eating disorder, she kept it fully to herself.
When host Alex Cooper, 31, asked if she confided in anyone, the singer said, “No. No one at all.”
However, David, 50, was a staunch supporter and helped her rework her fitness routine.
“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, you know, I didn’t feel like I could trust anyone at all. I managed to do it myself and turn an unhealthy obsession with food into a healthy relationship,” she noted. “Meaning understanding, it’s about balance, it’s about being healthy, about working out.”
Which she highly contributed to her other half.
“David helped me do that. You know, David was the one that changed my workout around. I was doing cardio, cardio, cardio. All I wanted to do was burn, burn, burn,” she explained. “He was the one that encouraged me to start weight training and we work out together. He’s always been so supportive and I’m very disciplined in the way that I eat. I’m healthy, I’m disciplined. And it’s about balance.”
