The Duchess of York has revealed that she's "had a weight problem" all her life, in a new interview with the Daily Mail. Opening up about the emotional issues behind it, she spoke of her parent's divorce, saying: "I remember thinking I was responsible for my parents splitting up — because I’d cut my hair. And because I wasn’t good enough. And that was when I began to comfort eat, and why I’ve had a weight problem all my life."
Sarah at daughter Princess Eugenie's wedding earlier this year
Sarah added: "It’s why I have total empathy with what it is like to be destroyed by self-hatred, because when you comfort eat you put on weight, and then beat yourself up for comfort eating. It is such a vicious circle. I comfort-ate all my life from the age of 13. I started when I was at boarding school, when I heard my parents were getting divorced. I got up to 14-and-a-half stone."
During the interview, she also reportedly shared that she now drinks sweet teas as a substitute to some of the sugary desserts she loves – in flavours such as jam roly-poly, chocolate tart and strawberries and cream. Sarah also touched-on how the experience of her own parents splitting affected the way she handled her divorce from Prince Andrew.
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"Of course we’re human, both Andrew and I, but when we walked through the door we never brought our adult problems to the children. This is always our rule." She later added: "When my parents divorced, I didn’t have a parent who was telling me the truth. I found out in 1974 through a newspaper what was happening. And I felt … I believed, that I had done something wrong. I think it’s really important that children don’t feel that. The fact that we divorced had absolutely nothing to do with the girls."
