Former Miss Ireland Lynda Duffy has opened up about how she used to starve herself for two weeks as she battled with an eating disorder.
The beauty queen – who was 2002’s Miss Ireland - admitted to her close friends and family only last year that her binge eating was at its worst when she would go with food for 14 and 15 days at a time.
Lynda suffered from an eating disorder five years ago after competing in the beauty pageant.
She said: “With binge eating, you eat really quickly, so it’s not about spending the day having different foods, or what most people might consider a pig-out that you might do over a period of an evening or a period of the day.
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“Binge eating disorder is eating as much as you can as quickly as you can.
“And I would go from that to restricting my food. When I say restricting my food, when I was at my worst I was going about 14, 15 days without any food.
“Nobody knew that until last year, because you hide it.
“When I say no food. I mean no food. Nothing passed my lips except water and green tea,” she told Sunday Independent’s Life magazine.
Speaking about being Miss Ireland in 2002, she admitted she probably didn’t appreciate it when she won.
“I should have been really proud. I suppose I had that mindset of not giving myself credit for things.
“I remember in the first two years after the win I’d be walking down the street in Galway and someone would say, ‘Oh, there’s Lynda! There’s Miss Ireland. ‘God, I thought she’d be taller, I thought she’d be skinnier. Look what she’s wearing! She looks terrible.”
She said despite being naturally a strong person, her self-esteem began to get low.
The winner of Miss Ireland got to compete in Miss World, but that year the competition was held in Nigeria, and it was a catastrophe after a newspaper article suggested Islam’s founding prophet Mohammed would have married a Miss World contestant.
The remark caused riots that left over 200 people dead.
Recalling Miss World that year, Lynda said: “I remember getting a call from the Gerry Ryan Show first thing in the morning and I didn’t really know what was going on at that point.”
After three days in Nigeria, organisers chartered a plane for the beauty queens to bring them home safely to London.
“I remember the saying to us ‘Don’t turn on your phone on the bus in case we get shot at.’ Like, just crazy stuff. It was wild.”
But when Lynda was in Nigeria at Miss World, she said she found it really hard to constantly do her hair and make up to perfection every day.
“I remember specifically two other Misses were like, ‘God, look at the state of her hair’. I just found it very hard to do the whole hair and make-up thing every day.
“It was just so unnatural for me that I really struggled.”
She admitted that she felt some resentment when she handed over the sash to Rosanna Davison the following year, which subsequently saw Rosanna become the only Irish person to win Miss World.
“I remember that was in Citywest Hotel. When she won Miss World, I remember saying, ‘Oh great, the person after me has to go and win Miss World just to make me look even worse.’
“I’ve met Rosanna a few times and it’s amazing for her. That’s something she’ll carry for her whole life and it’s a real honour.”
But Lynda has since battled her demons after discovering Rapid Transformational Therapy.
“It sounds so simple but it’s about understanding why I was doing it. It’s about understanding why I was doing it.
“It’s about understanding trauma. Trauma can be anything from physical illness to something your parents said to you when you were young and it stuck with you for life.”
Lynda has spent a year training to become a practitioner before taking on her first clients.
“I love what I do,” she added.
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