CHELTENHAM, ENGLAND – OCTOBER 7: Melanie Chisholm, singer songwriter, also known as Melanie C or Spo (Image: Getty Images)
has lifted the lid on some of the “difficult parts” she faced at the height of her music career.
The alum – known to fans as Sporty Spice – joined the band back in 1994 alongside her bandmates Victoria Beckham [Posh Spice], Geri Halliwell [Ginger Spice], Melanie ‘B’ Brown [Scary Spice] and Emma Bunton [Baby Spice].
It didn’t take long before the group catapulted to fame when they released their debut single Wannabe in 1996. The band quickly became an international success with millions of die-hard fans all over the world fighting to attend their worldwide tours in the nineties and noughties.
Despite all their musical success, it wasn’t always plain sailing for the singers. Back in 2022, the mum-of-one opened up about her hidden struggles in her autobiography The Sporty One: My Life as a Spice Girl.
The brunette beauty opened up about some of her early struggles in an interview with where she opened up about her battle with clinical depression and an eating disorder.
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The Spice Girls – Melanie B, Melanie C, Geri Halliwell, Victoria Adams And Emma Bunton, The Spice Gi (Image: Getty Images)
Describing that time of her life as a “mixed bag of emotions”, she revealed: “I was quite unwell for a few years. When I look back, I don’t know physically how I did it; when you consider how little I lived on and how much exercise I was doing alongside a brutal schedule.”
In the summer of 1994, the pop group were managed by Chic Murphy, who she claims made a comment about her thighs when she did a backflip at a pool.
From there, the musician revealed how she started to eliminate food groups and ruling out carbs, which ultimately stopped her natural menstrual cycle.
In 2000, her new manager Simon Fuller sent her to a mental health clinic after the star struggled to fight the urge to binge eat and purging until she was “unconscious”.
She went on: “It was more the level of fame. And so many of my issues were driven by control or lack of control. I was binge drinking. I was binge eating.
“I was embarrassed and ashamed of it I had to keep it a secret because even though you’re in a denial about it, there’s still that tiny little voice going, ‘This isn’t right, you can’t continue like this’.”
Mel C explained that around that time, the group disbanded which stirred up potentially suicidal thoughts. The hitmaker went on: “My own behaviour discouraged me so much. I didn’t know how far that could progress. So, it was definitely time to get outside help.”
The northern lass was diagnosed with clinical depression, anorexia, a binge-eating disorder, severe anxiety and agoraphobia, according to the Daily Mail. It is understood that she started a treatment of antidepressants.
Now, the doting mum sees herself as a “warrior”, adding: “Sometimes when I think of what I have done and what I now deal with every day; with work, with being a mum, with family stull. I’m like, ‘F**k, I’m still standing’.”
If you’re worried about your own or someone else’s health, you can contact Beat, the UK’s eating disorder charity, on 0808 801 0677 or