Youdale continued to explain that becoming Jet actually helped her reframe how she saw herself and to feel “OK” about her changing body: “That really helped me go, ‘Well actually having a bit more booby and botty, and it not wobbling around too much – it’s alright to have lumps and bumps in all the right places. I’m being Jet because of who I am.’”

She added: “In the 90s, we’d come out of the 80s ‘heroin chic’… [where] having a skeletal frame had become very normalised in fashion and in the mainstream. Women [thought] ‘Gosh you’ve got to not have a figure to be beautiful’.

“Well I thought, ‘To hell with it. Here we are: functional athletes with lumps and bumps and lots of fantastic, natural muscle…’”

After quitting Gladiators following an injury from a nasty fall, Youdale became a qualified psychotherapist, which has helped frame her outlook on life now: “I’m very much [of the opinion] you can’t change what’s outside of you, but you can very much start to change how you look at the world from inside. I love the body I’ve been given.”

You can listen to the full interview on the Celebrity Catch Up: Life After That Thing I Did podcast.

For information and help on eating disorders, visit the eating disorder charity Beat website.

Gladiators star Jet reveals how the show changed her relationship with her body