LOVE Island hunk Jack Fincham has been secretly battling bulimia for two decades and admits: “I now need daily medication to deal with the damage it’s done to my body.”
The star was just 14 when he developed the eating disorder while starting out as a boxer because he needed to get down to his fighting weight.
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But over the years it became a vicious cycle — whenever Jack, now 33, felt depressed or like a failure he punished his body by bingeing, then making himself sick.
Now a pro boxer, last year he even resorted to using slimming jabs to try to get down to his fighting weight before a bout, which escalated his problems.
He says: “I have been a bulimic for 19 years, bingeing on food and then being sick. There have been days when I have ordered a McDonald’s breakfast on Uber Eats, then gone to the Co-op and bought 12 bags of salt- and-vinegar McCoy’s crisps, then had bags and bags of fizzy belt sweets.
“I have had two large Domino’s pizzas with all the sides. It makes me feel ashamed. There have been so many times that I have gone to the garage and got the same thing — a Ginsters Cornish pasty, one of their peppered steak slices, a sausage roll, bags of sweets and more McCoy’s.
“I’d eat it all, then go to the downstairs toilet at my mum’s — because nobody could hear me, as it was in the hall, next to the front door. I know it’s gross, but for years I didn’t actually think I had a problem.”
Jack, who also has ADHD and has admitted battles with drugs, alcohol and gambling in the past, is unsure how his eating disorder began but he believes it is connected to his first boxing matches.
He says: “I had to be a certain weight, so I would go in the sauna and sit in hot baths.
I remember the first time I made myself sick was the night before a match
Jack Fincham
“A friend taught me that you could chew food to get the taste and then spit it out so you’d avoid calories.
“I’d go three days with hardly any food and was so starving, my mum asked my boxing club if I could eat.
“They told her I could have a jacket potato with beans. I weighed just 52kg.
“It was a tough time for me. I’d just discovered my dad wasn’t in fact my biological father, and I think that screwed with my head.
“And I wanted to be good at boxing. Before an evening match I’d go to school and not eat or drink a thing so that I’d be ready for the weigh-in. I could lose 1.5kg in a day doing that. I was just a kid.
“The first time I made myself sick was the night before a match. I’d gone to the garage for food for after the match, and it was in my bag.
“But I was starving and I caved in. And I couldn’t stop. I’d bought two large packets of Oreo biscuits and ate them all, quickly, one after the other without really thinking about it.
At times I was being sick five days a week. I didn’t realise the harm I was doing to my body
Jack Fincham
“And then I panicked and made myself sick. After that it was my cheat code. I truly didn’t think there was anything wrong with it back then, I just used it before a fight.”
But Jack’s “cheat code” became a pattern of punishment.
He says: “If I hadn’t won a match I’d go home, watch a boxing film like Warrior or Rocky and feel useless.
“Or I’d mind-numbingly watch videos on my iPad for hours, of Oreos being deep-fried — then binge, before feeling like a fat loser, and punish my body by being sick.”
It was then that Jack’s well- documented addiction to drugs and drink began.
When he was high on cocaine he wouldn’t eat, but afterwards he would be hungry and binge.
He says: “At times I was being sick five days a week. I didn’t realise the harm I was doing to my body — that any nutrients I’d eaten from decent food was being thrown up along with the crap I had gorged on.
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“Eventually it caught up with me because I started to get really bad reflux. I was in agony. I went to the doctor and told him everything. I am now taking tablets to deal with the acid in my throat. I’m in agony without daily medication. I could be on them for ever, I don’t know.”
For a man who has battled an eating disorder for so long it seems surprising that he would want to appear in his trunks on Love Island in 2018.
But Jack, who shot to fame after winning the series with ex-partner Dani Dyer, says: “I liked the way I looked then. I was a normal guy. I liked the Jack I was — no bingeing around boxing matches, no booze, no drugs, no addictions, just being me.”
He has kept his illness a secret from all those around him, including Towie’s Chloe Brockett, who he has been dating for five years.
But the pair have had a troubled time.
Jack bravely admitted earlier this year that he blew his £1million TV fortune on drugs, booze and gambling, but is now sober.
Then he won an appeal against a jail term for offences related to a dangerous dog.
Last month he and Chloe, 24, split for a sixth time, but Jack doesn’t know if it is over for good.
He says: “Chloe and I haven’t been in a great place. I’m living at my mum’s and she has moved out of the house we lived in and into her own flat. I don’t know what will happen between us. I still love her. I doubt it’s over for good.
“We’ve been through a hell of a lot in the past couple of years. I didn’t tell her about the bulimia, it is a hard thing to discuss with anybody. Even Mum doesn’t know.
“I am a very open bloke. I cry, I wear my heart on my sleeve, but bulimia, for a bloke, I didn’t think it was something I could discuss.”
Jack says when cricket star Freddie Flintoff and comic Jack Whitehall spoke publicly about their bulimia fights he realised he was not alone.
He says: “It was after Freddie opened up about his personal battle about five years ago that I felt a bit better about the secret I was hiding. I started to read up on it.
“He and I worked on the TV show Don’t Rock The Boat and we had a great connection.
“He said his bulimia started because he needed to get in shape for his career, like mine. I am speaking out now because I don’t want the next kid who wants to be an athlete to go down the same route, to put their health in danger.
“I’d no idea back when I started that it can cause the reflux that I have, which can rot tooth enamel and damage your stomach.”
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Jack admits his reflux problem worsened after he took drastic action to reach the right weight before a boxing match in March last year, when he tried Wegovy weight-loss injections.
He says: “I bought two jabs — the first from a private clinic — and stupidly I said I didn’t just want the starter dose, I wanted to go as high as she would sell me. And she did sell me them. And I became obsessed, I loved it. But the second dose I bought, from a friend of a friend, made me so ill. I felt sick all the time, my stomach was bloated and I was constipated. And I was crippled with acid reflux.
“The jabs cost £130 each and it was the worst money I’ve ever spent, I felt so ill. God knows what was in the second one. It was off the black market — anything could have been in it.
“I’ve always taken risks with my health and, looking back, I feel stupid. I got down to my fighting weight. I lost 10kg in two months, but I looked physically shocking.
“It wasn’t a good look — I wasn’t ripped, I was just skin and flesh.
“These jabs may be OK if you’re going to do it just to slim down maybe, but I had no muscle, no definition, no power, no stamina.
“My body wasn’t fuelled, it was depleted. I went back into the ring this March and was the same weight as when I was on the jabs, but looked great. I had done it the right way — through diet, nutrition, being healthy.
I am sick of hitting the self-destruct button. My body has taken enough
Jack Fincham
“Nobody knows what s**t is in those black-market jabs. I hope by speaking out I will stop anyone else from going down the same path as me.”
Jack has now quit slimming jabs, But dealing with his eating disorder will not be so easy.
He says: “After that fight in March I hurt my shoulder and couldn’t train, so again I punished my body. I remember going to Tesco’s and getting four meal-deal wraps, with more McCoy’s and Dairylea Lunchables and Dunkers — about four boxes of them, too. I still have an unhealthy relationship with food. And that’s one of the reasons I also want to speak out.
“My boxing coach doesn’t know about this, my nutritionist doesn’t, and I want them to know and this is my way of doing it.
“People may see me as some thick reality-star addict but I don’t want to be seen that way.
“I want to be a brilliant, well fuelled, healthy boxer.
“This is a battle I’ve had for nearly 20 years. And I can never say never. But I hope by speaking out, by learning about nutrition which I now have, and having the right team about me, I can change things going forward.
“I am sick of hitting the self- destruct button. My body has taken enough.”
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How common are eating disorders in the UK?
BETWEEN 1.25million and 3.4million people in the UK have an eating disorder, research suggests.
Around 25 per cent of those affected are male.
Most eating disorders develop during adolescence and are most commonly diagnosed between the ages of 16 and 40, though they can affect anyone at any age.
Around 10 per cent of people with an eating disorder have anorexia, and about 40 per cent have bulimia.
The rest of sufferers have binge eating disorder or OSFED (other specified feeding or eating disorder).
Eating disorders have the highest mortality rates among psychiatric disorders.
The earlier someone gets help, the better their chances of recovery.
Hospital admissions for eating disorders have increased 84 per cent in the last five years, according to The Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Source: Priory Group
