CRICKET legend Andrew Flintoff has told how he regularly made himself throw up during matches after being labelled “fat”.
The Top Gear host, 42, also admitted he cannot now watch himself playing as he is “ashamed” of how he looked.
He said: “I scored my first hundred in New Zealand in Christchurch. I came off at lunch and threw my lunch up.
“I knew all the grounds and where it was easier [to throw up]. Lord’s was so much easier because the toilets were away from the dressing rooms.”
He kept it secret, as he “didn’t want my relationship in the dressing room to change — I knew what the reaction would be”.
Two-time Ashes winner “Freddie”, who has four kids with wife Rachel, 42, told 5Live’s Headliners: “I never look back on old games. I can’t identify with that person. I see this person who is a stone-and-a-half heavier than what I am now.”
He added: “I think in some ways I thought the way I was dealing with it I had a lid on it and I was muddling along in my own way…
“I remember when I started making myself sick it felt like my decision. I was getting hammered in the papers for being overweight. I was known as the fat cricketer and it was the quick fix to do it.
“Then I went from doing it if I had a drink and doing it if I had eaten foods I didn’t want to eat or felt I shouldn’t eat, to then doing it most meals.
“That was then it started controlling me.”
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