The Secret Affliction That Made Me Feel Ashamed of My Body ; It's Why She Keeps Her Hair Long and Never Wears Backless Dresses. Here, Tv Nutritionist Gillian Mckeith Reveals the Agonising Back Problem She has Hidden All Her Life... And How She Finally Found Relief Good Health

Summary

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FOOD guru Gillian McKeith is famous for licking the nation into shape on her Channel 4 series You Are What You Eat. But despite appearing so fit and healthy, the TV presenter suffers from a debilitating spinal condition which affects one in every 250 children in the UK. Here, Gillian, 43, who lives in London with her husband Howard, 43, a lawyer, and their daughters Skyla, ten, and Afton, five, tells TESSA CUNNINGHAM how it has affected her life . . .

WALKING along the red carpet at the celebrity-studded Bafta film awards in April, I felt a million dollars. The cameras of the paparazzi clicked away, but with the likes of Cate Blanchett and Sienna Miller at the event, I never expected to see my picture in the papers the next day.

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The Secret Affliction That Made Me Feel Ashamed of My Body ; It's Why She Keeps Her Hair Long and Never Wears Backless Dresses. Here, Tv Nutritionist Gillian Mckeith Reveals the Agonising Back Problem She has Hidden All Her Life... And How She Finally Found Relief Good Health

How wrong I was: the next morning, I was in virtually every newspaper - being mocked for my shocking fashion sense. In my gold lamE gown, I was variously likened to a giant Easter egg and a Quality Street chocolate. The insults stung.

But what really hurt was that no one knew the real reason why I'd chosen that dress - though how could I blame them? Through a mixture of denial and embarrassment, I have hidden my unsightly back condition, scoliosis, for the past 30 years.

The truth is, my back is curved into an S-shape and I also have a large protruding hump on my left side. I chose that gold lamE dress precisely to avoid a...

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