12-05-2025
I lied my way into getting skinny jabs but it was a BIG mistake - I'm still battling bulimia and even resorted to weighing myself after every glass of water, admits Nicola McLean
Nicola McClean has bravely opened up about her ongoing eating disorder and admitted that she was weighing herself after everything that she consumed at rock bottom.
The former glamour model, 43, appeared on the most recent episode of Vanessa Feltz 's YouTube show, With Love, Vanessa, and they got chatting about the topic of weight.
Vanessa, 63, asked Nicola: 'Have you ever had an issue with weight?'
Nicola said: 'Yeah so I am a recovering anorexic. I'll be honest, I still do suffer with bulimia.
'It's very managed at the minute, but it's one of the ones I can't kick it, if I'm really honest.'
Bulimia (bulimia nervosa) is an eating disorder and serious mental health condition. It can affect anyone and treatment may take time, but you can recover from it.
According to Beat Eating Disorders, Anorexia is: 'A serious mental illness where a person restricts their food intake, which often causes them to be severely underweight.'
She continued: 'The anorexia, I went down to under six stone when I had my second child. I wasn't eating anything, I'd weigh myself even after having water.
'I'd throw everything up that I did consume, even water. I ended up in a really bad way.
'As I say, the bulimia, I think it's an OCD as well, it's like when things get stressful in my life, it's my go to.'
Vanessa was keen to know what her view on weight loss jabs are after medicine such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro have become a popular tool for people in recent months to shed some pounds.
Nicola explained: 'What I think about them is that I think that they are fantastic, obviously you're proof that they are and if they are done well and done correctly, they are so good.'
However the star has highlighted how dangerous they can be, after she managed to get hold of some herself on social media.
'But I managed to get one over Instagram and I was doing it.
'For someone obviously, who has a mental health illness with eating disorders, it's absolutely the wrong thing for me to be doing.
'I should never have been given it. I lied to get it.
'But I should never have been given it, so I feel like if it's more readily available on the NHS, we can stop going down the dark route of getting them.
'If I'd have gone to my GP and said I feel like I need them. They would have maybe been able to say Nicola where are you at the minute with your eating disorder?'
WHAT IS BULIMIA?
Bulimia (bulimia nervosa) is an eating disorder and serious mental health condition. It can affect anyone and treatment may take time, but you can recover from it.
The main signs of bulimia are:
Purging may include making yourself sick (vomiting), taking laxative or diuretic medicines, avoiding eating for long periods of time, exercising excessively, or a combination of these.
The main treatments are:
Talking therapies, medicines (such as antidepressants, if you have another mental health condition) and support from a nutrition specialist
Source: NHS
Vanessa replied: 'They would. If you went to a GP and said "let's measure your BMI, you're not eligible for it I'm afraid."
'And you wouldn't have been able to get it.'
Guest Anthea Turner asked: 'Why didn't you? What stopped you going to your doctor?'
Nicola replied: 'Because I knew I wouldn't get one.
'I knew I wouldn't get one.
'I wanted one and un fortunately with any active addiction, you will manipulate to get what you want.'
Vanessa asked: 'Tell me something, when you were actually taking the jabs, did you feel that the food noise went away?'
Nicola confessed: 'Yeah. That is one thing.
'I think even my husband, who has been really great over my eating disorder, he understands the food noise.
'He doesn't have it, but he understands it.
'When I have, I've also had slimming pills from the black market, I've done everything that you could possibly done to lose weight.
'When you get that disconnect and to stop thinking about food...
'It's so nice. It's so nice.
'So to be able to have that for a month was amazing but I was very sick, my husband ended up throwing it in the bin, he was like this is no good for you.
'But the food noise, when you don't have that, it's so freeing.'
Nicola last spoke about her eating disorder in 2021.
The star spoke honestly about her struggle with anorexia and bulimia, claiming that she feels 'more loved' when she's unwell.
As she reflected on where her struggles with the diseases, which she has struggled with since the age of 11, stem from, she explained: 'I feel more loved when I'm ill - it sounds so mucked up!
'But when I was at my smallest, when I was really anorexic, it was the most I'd felt loved. People would say, "Oh my God, are you OK?"
'And where I'm a big character, people don't ever think that I'm not OK. Sometimes that's hard.'
Nicola went on to detail how being stuck in lockdown during the global pandemic has been 'horrendous' for her anxiety and has also impacted her eating disorder.
She explained that during the first lockdown panic buyers had bought up all the food she would normally have eaten, leaving her family with just chicken nuggets as an option which she couldn't have.
The Celebrity Big Brother star added that she felt 'done' because of the lack of food she was used to, and claimed she must have been the 'only person who lost weight' at the time.
