They are the vibrant husband-and-wife team from Channel Nine’s hit show LEGO Masters, who can build anything from colourful bricks.
WATCH! Meet LEGO Masters team Jimmy and Maddy!
But while Maddy Tyers and Jimmy Eaton ooze confidence on screen, one of them wasn’t always so happy in their own skin.
“I was a very overachieving kid and a perfectionist,” Maddy tells New Idea. “Around that time, I started developing harsh views of myself and wanted to improve myself and look better.”
Maddy reveals she started cutting out unhealthy foods from her diet but, over time, became stricter and started refusing to eat family meals.
“In Year 10 it got to the danger zone, I dropped a huge amount of weight,”
she says. “I was barely eating and running a lot.”
Her family became concerned about her dramatic weight loss, but when Maddy looked in the mirror she couldn’t see it.
“I didn’t think I had an eating disorder,” she admits. “I looked at myself and thought I was way too big to be labelled with an eating disorder …
I was very much in denial.”
But at the age of 15,
Maddy was told she was so underweight that she was at risk of having a heart attack. She was immediately admitted to hospital with an eating disorder and Maddy says: “That was a rude awakening.”
Despite recovering, Maddy admits that she battles her eating disorder every day.
“A few years have passed and it’s still a struggle,” she says. “But I’m at a point where I am learning to love myself.”
Now, Maddy is focusing on her passions and appearing on LEGO Masters.
“When we found out we were going to be on the show, it was pretty surreal,” she says. “We’re literally going to be big kids and not think about anything but being creative and building.”
- If you or someone you know needs support, help is available from Lifeline on 13 11 14.
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