Wednesday, 15 November 2006

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Gillian McKeith: I hope my daughters don't inherit my deformity

She's battled scoliosis since her teens

Dr Gillian McKeith has achieved huge success with her TV show You Are What You Eat, in
which she transforms people’s lives with her diet advice.

But what, until now, has remained a secret is how important good nutrition is to her own life: it helps her cope with scoliosis, a painful spinal deformity that once made her so self-conscious she grew her hair to her waist to try to disguise it and worried how men would react to her body.

I thought I was ugly

'I’d think to myself: “God, they’re going to take one look at me and be turned right off!” she says, remembering how terrified she was at the thought of being with a man. ‘But luckily they never were, so my self-confidence didn’t suffer too much.’

Gillian was 12 when she was first diagnosed with scoliosis, a curvature of the spine that can twist the vertebrae, causing the back and shoulders to bulge out. Her condition wasn’t really noticeable during her teens, but that changed when she hit her twenties and began
to develop a slight hunch.

‘I’d look at my back in the mirror and it was just so ugly,’ she recalls. ‘I went through periods when I felt very sorry for myself.’

My diet was awful

At the time, Scotland-born Gillian was working as a health journalist in the US and she admits she was just as unhealthy as some of the clients we now see her treating on TV.

She says she snacked on crisps and chocolate washed down with pots of tea, never ate fresh fruit or vegetables and was almost 3st overweight for her 5ft 3in height.

Looking back, she believes this poor lifestyle exacerbated her spinal condition by overloading her body with toxins. ‘Bad foods ruin organ function and put stress on the kidneys,’ she explains. ‘Now I never allow toxins to build up in my body because it makes my condition harder to deal with.’

But Gillian admits it took shock tactics to make her change her unhealthy diet. ‘My boyfriend dumped me at a three-day macrobiotic retreat. I tried to get a taxi to escape but couldn’t,’ she laughs. ‘I missed a whole meal because I refused to eat the food and cried when I was given seaweed mixed with beans, which I thought looked disgusting.’

But, incredibly, at the end of the retreat Gillian couldn’t believe how much better she felt and she decided to change her diet for good. Fortunately, she even forgave her boyfriend Howard, who she went on to marry.

I was warned having kids could worsen my scoliosis

The resulting weight loss and improved health through Gillian’s change of diet made her scoliosis better. But doctors warned her that having children could worsen the condition.

Refusing to let this deter them, Gillian and Howard went on to have two daughters – Skyla, now 10, and Afton, five. Although both pregnancies were trouble-free, Gillian thinks that childbirth, compounded by a nasty fall, exacerbated the spinal condition during her thirties.

‘I wasn’t in pain with my condition until 10 years ago, when I had a bad fall that shifted my spine,’ she explains. ‘The fall, along with the fact my muscles were weakened by having children, made things worse.’

Gillian also worries that her daughters may inherit the condition, as scoliosis has been shown to have a genetic link, with 25 per cent of sufferers having a direct relative with the disease.

‘I’m continually checking them,’ she reveals. Fortunately, both girls are fine so far.

Eating well keeps me in tip top condition

Gillian now manages her condition by eating well – she swears by fresh vegetable juice to flush out toxins – and does daily sessions of Pilates, which she started practising five years ago.

‘I do Pilates every day and it’s changed my life,’ she explains. ‘It’s enabled me to build strength in my core muscles – from my stomach right through to my back – which helps combat the pain. As long as I do that and ensure I don’t allow toxins to build up in my body and stress my system, I’m fine.’

Rachael Woolston