Victoria's Secret's Bridget Malcolm reveals struggle with body dysmorphia
‘I am sorry for being so public about damaging eating habits’
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Your support makes all the difference.A former Victoria’s Secret model has written a candid blog post about her past struggles with body dysmorphia and the damaging effect of promoting “clean eating”.
Bridget Malcolm is a 26-year-old Australian model who walked the runway for the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show in 2015 and 2016.
Malcolm runs a blog in which she regularly shares her views on nutrition, fitness and wellbeing.
In November last year, Malcolm revealed the typical eating regime that she follows when not preparing for a catwalk, as her diet can be very restrictive when in training mode.
However, Malcolm has now written a lengthy post detailing the difficulties that she previously faced when attempting to overcome body dysmorphia and conveying her apologies to her followers for advocating what she describes as “disordered eating”.
“I would like to acknowledge and apologise for some of the things I wrote and spoke about over the past couple of years,” she wrote.
“I now know that I was completely in the depths of body dysmorphia and it really worries me that I was not a positive role model out there.”
Malcolm explained how she honestly did believe that she was perpetuating a healthy lifestyle at the time, but didn’t realise how detrimental her habits had actually become to both her mental and physical wellbeing.
“I would fill up on foods that were low calorie, and think that I was eating a healthy balanced diet,” she said.
“I would eat such an extreme diet, and train so hard because I would look in the mirror and see someone who needed to lose weight looking back at me.
“I am sorry for being so public about damaging eating habits.”
When a person is suffering from the mental health condition that is body dysmorphia, they will often become anxious over flaws in their appearance that other people would never even notice or acknowledge as faults.
Malcolm experienced the debilitating effects of body dysmorphia, as did many of her peers in the modelling industry.
“Body dysmorphia is a terrifying thing,” she wrote. “I have had countless conversations with fellow models, all of whom are tiny, where they call themselves fat.
However, Malcolm’s worked hard to transform her mindset and gain a new perspective on what it means to lead a healthy and balanced life.
“For the first time what I am seeing in the mirror is actually my reflection looking back at me,” she wrote.
“And for the first time that I can remember, I like my body.
“The guilt I feel at some of the things I used to recommend as healthy eating habits, truly because I believed them makes me sick,” she continued.
“I do not want to make damaging recommendations anymore. I only want to speak the truth.”
Malcolm stated that she will no longer associate herself with the term “clean eating”, a widely-used phrase that has been the source of much debate.
“That word aggravates me. It is 2016 talk for disordered eating,” she said.
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