Beauty is Health , Health is Beauty

From just 500 calories a day to 5,000: Bodybuilder, 35, says lifting weights saved her from anorexia

·         Lisa Cross weighed just six and a half stone as a teenager

·         She was so small she had to wear children's clothes

·         She started weight lifting when she was dating a bodybuilder in Japan

·         She now eats 5,000 calories a day in ten small meals

·         Her diet consists of oats, rice, protein shakes, turkey and steaks

·         She says she feels healthier and sexier than ever before

·         She dreams of competing in Ms Olympia - the competition for the world's best female bodybuilders

MS CROSS'S BODYBUILDING DIET AND EXERCISE PLAN

6am: Protein shake
8.30am: Cardio workout for 30 minutes
9am: 120g of turkey, 200g of sweet potato
11am: 120g turkey, 200g of sweet potato
1pm: Protein shake
1.30pm-2.30pm: Weight training
2.30pm: Recovery drink
3.30pm: 120g turkey, 200g of sweet potato

Ms Cross’s current 5,000 calorie diet consists of oats, rice, protein shakes, turkey, recovery drinks, steak and broccoli.

The 35-year-old, said: ‘I’ve never felt so happy about myself. I feel feminine and I feel sexy.

‘As a bodybuilder you have to be critical about yourself because you can always improve but at the same time I finally feel confident in my own skin.

‘Over the years as I’ve trained, my attitude to food has completely changed. I don’t eat it for taste anymore - I see food as fuel whereas at one time I feared what it would do to my body.

‘At one stage I was eating less than 500 calories a day. Now I eat about 5,000.’

Ms Cross’s eating problems began while studying for her GCSEs

The high-pressured environment led her to seek solace in starvation as it was the only thing about her life she could control.

She recalled: ‘I was never the most academically gifted, it didn’t come to me as naturally as it did the other girls and I suppose the pressure came from myself.

‘I had always had an odd attitude to food, using faddy diets and developing strange habits but at around the age of 15 I stopped eating altogether.

‘I would eat a little bit of fruit in the mornings and then fill up on water throughout the day. I would refuse to eat in front of anyone and find excuses not to be around at mealtimes.

‘If someone tried to make me eat, I would get aggressive and it caused huge arguments with my family.

‘My whole personality changed and I became really introverted, scared to speak to anyone in case the conversation turned to food.

‘I was buying my clothes from Mothercare but rather than finding it odd I was actually kind of proud of myself, which just goes to show how messed up my thinking was.’

While on a family holiday aged 17, Ms Cross’s father took a photo of her in a bikini in the hope that it would shock her into changing her habits

But the turning point eventually came a few months later when she started to lose her hair.

Ms Cross, from Plymouth, said: ‘Like all young girls I liked my hair and one day in the shower it started coming out in clumps.

‘It was a real wake up call to me. I was experiencing pains in my heart and I was constantly cold. My joints ached and I had no energy at all.

‘I had no enthusiasm for anything and I was only sleeping a few hours a night. In my spare time I would do sit ups in my bedroom for hours until my spine hurt from rubbing against the floor.

But even though 5ft 6in Ms Cross managed to get up to a size 12, weighing 11st 7lbs, her eating and exercise habits remained unhealthy. 

‘I was trying to get better but after spending so long being afraid of food I didn’t really know how to eat,’ she said