Strictly's Dianne nearly suffered a heart attack because of her eating disorder
Dianne Buswell has opened up about her eating disorder and said it almost caused her to have a heart attack.
The Strictly Come Dancing pro admitted things got so extreme that she was working out “six hours a day” and making herself sick in a quest to get the “perfect body”. This resulted in her passing out and being unable to move at one point.
She recalled how doctors even told her she was at risk of cardiac arrest if she carried on doing what she was doing. This turned out to be the wake-up call Australian dancer Dianne needed and led to her telling friends and family about her bulimia and getting the help she needed to recover.
These days the 34-year-old is back to a healthy weight and life is good. Viewers watched as she reached this year’s Strictly final with EastEnders actor partner Bobby Brazier. Dianne has also been in a relationship with YouTube star Joe Sugg for the past five years.
Strictly star Dianne Buswell has opened up on her eating disorder struggles (Instagram)
Though she is healthy now, doctors once warned she could have a heart attack (Instagram)Opening up on her past struggles, Dianne told Closer magazine: “As a dancer, I used to think I had to look a certain way to be cast in something, but that’s not the case at all. Very thin can sometimes mean you’re not doing things in the correct way or looking after yourself. For so long I didn’t tell anyone, not even my parents. I would say, ‘Oh I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m just loving working out six hours a day’. I didn’t, but I was covering it up.”
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But the turning point came when doctors told her she could have a heart attack, Dianne said: “It got to a stage where I was very weak and had anxiety about being on stage. I’d lose the ability to know what to do next and it was affecting me every day.”
After speaking to loved ones, Dianne sought treatment and says coming out the other side is one of her “greatest achievements”. She said: “Rather than neglecting your body to look a certain way, it’s about how you feel, and that’s been the most rewarding lesson. I would say to my younger self now, there’s no such thing as the so-called perfect body – it’s not realistic."
Earlier this year, Dianne admitted she “wasn’t well” before finding fame on Strictly and made her living working as a dancer on cruise ships. She revealed she would make herself sick in a bid to lose weight as she would have to step on the scales every week.
Her obsession with trying to achieve the perfect weight and figure even landed her in hospital after skipping meals and excessive exercise led to her developing anaemia, caused by a lack of iron in the body. Her periods also stopped and she found it a struggle to climb the stairs.
Speaking to ’s Lorraine about her health, Dianne shared: “I worked on a cruise ship for quite a while. It’s tricky, because as a dancer you get weighed. We got weighed every week and had a thing called a WW, which was a weight warning. I had two of them in my time and I weighed two more kilos that I do now.”
Explaining how it would affect her, the Strictly star continued: “I went through one point where I just wouldn’t eat, so I just had a drink for lunch and a drink for dinner. I got really sick and if I did have some food, I would make myself sick because I wouldn’t want it in me.
“I adore dancing, but I guess as I became more successful, the pressures also grew. That can really spiral you into this awful self-doubt and the pressure of that makes you do crazy things.”
Admitting she “definitely took the body image thing to an unhealthy level”, Dianne explained how she turned things around: “It had come to a point where I couldn’t go any further. There is still that slight voice in the back of my head – I don’t think it ever 100% goes away – but it’s how I deal with it now and that is much stronger, healthier and better for me.”
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