Ellie Boatman: I became obsessive very quickly and that stemmed into an eating disorder

After making her Olympic debut at Paris 2024, life is good for GB Sevens rugby player Ellie Boatman. “I was going to the gym just to lose weight and do lots of cardio and basically be as small as possible,” she tells the Telegraph Women’s Sport Podcast, hosted by Dame Laura Kenny and released every Thursday. In the second episode of the TWS podcast, entitled “Body Image”, the issue is discussed at length with guests Boatman, the three-time para-taekwondo world champion Amy Truesdale, and Kate Dale, a campaign director for This Girl Can at Sport England. Teenage years triggered self-consciousness about playing rugby However, when she reached her teenage years, she began to realise rugby wasn’t necessarily accepted as a “girl’s sport” and that’s when she started to feel more conscious about her appearance. “And when I went to university, I really struggled with my own eating disorder, and fitness became very obsessive – I stopped playing rugby at 16.” Being a young girl in the early 2000s meant growing up surrounded by women discussing new dieting regimes, being expected to conform to often-restrictive eating habits, and seeing magazine front covers splashed with degrading comments on celebrities’ appearances.