"MAFS Star Opens Up About Struggling with an Eating Disorder: 'I Ignored My Friends' Pleas for Help'"

AS she uploaded her latest snap to Instagram, Laura Vaughn was flooded with comments about her shrinking frame.

Since finding fame on in 2023, the 35-year-old had become used to people picking her apart online, but the reality of her situation had become increasingly concerning for friends and family, who were left begging her to get help. Here, for the first time, Laura opens up about living with an eating disorder (ED), and tells us why she continued to hide her crippling condition for so long.

Laura Vaughan said her friends were left concerned after they noticed her ‘shrinking’Credit: Instagram/laurajayvaughan Laura thought she’d finally ‘fit in’ by going on the E4 show in 2023Credit: E4 The MAFS star admitted she’d restrict her food in a bid to regain control over her lifeCredit: Instagram

In an exclusive interview with The Sun, Laura admitted her life was suddenly turned upside down last year after experiencing extreme bouts of following a series of losses.

She explained how the grief had manifested itself in the form of an ED – which left her friends and family fearing for her.

TV star Laura revealed that she’s dropped three dress sizes in less than 12 months – going from a size ten to a size six. Things got so bad that she started to notice a series of problems, including .

Laura, who became a standout bride from the show and has gone on to have a successful career, admitted that, as well as fans pointing out her weight loss, her friends also tried to step in.

But at the time, Laura wasn’t in the right headspace to hear it and was in complete denial.

I would go more than a day-and-a-half or two days without food

Laura Vaughan

In her most honest interview yet, Laura said: “I was getting quite a few very well-intentioned comments in my DMs from followers, just saying, ‘Oh my gosh, you look really amazing at the minute, like, how have you lost so much weight?'”

But Laura has always been transparent with fans, admitting that her life is not picture perfect and she’s been through tough times, like the loss of her father when she was a teen and the breakdown of her first .

Just last year, Laura lost another beloved family member, her stepfather, Rich, following a battle with .

Her weight loss was “unintentional” and a response to her grief and heartbreak following a recent split.

But once she had made the link, the star said that she started restricting her food intake as a way of regaining some “control” in her life.

She says: “I would go more than a day-and-a-half or two days without food.

“In the height of it, I did this thing where I was like, ‘Oh, I’m aware I’m not eating’ and hadn’t been drinking much.

“I started having pain in my lower back, and I was like, ‘This is not normal’, it’s because I’d not even really been drinking enough.

“I’d put my kidneys under a little bit of stress. It wasn’t bad enough that I had to seek medical intervention – it was my body saying ‘nourish me’.

“It was a by-product of just a very sad six months.

“People at the time that were around me, they would say, ‘Have you eaten anything today? We’ve just seen you have a matcha and it’s 4pm.’

“I guess I started to become aware of it then.

“It’s embarrassing to admit, but I thought to myself, ‘I’ve noticed that now, I’m going to see how long I can continue to do that.’

Laura pictured in 2024 at size 10Credit: Getty The TV star said her grief and heartbreak manifested themselves in the form of an EDCredit: instagram/@laurajayvaughan

“I was doing it because I needed to control something.

“Although it’s such a dangerous thing to do, it probably became a lot more disordered than I’d care to admit, but I don’t think we should shy away from that, as an ED can come in lots of different guises.

“I just didn’t care enough to nurture my body. I felt so stressed and so stretched thin, I didn’t know if I could show up for myself.

“I was noticing I was getting really tired. I’m probably not healthy.

“I was getting really out of breath, and that was because I wasn’t fueling my body.”

Describing what it felt like, Laura said: “You feel like your mental plates are so stacked full of things that you physically can’t fit anything in.”

‘Dinnertime was a battle’

Laura said that she wished someone had sat her down and had more empathy for the situation, rather than just pointing out the obvious, which felt like “an attack”.

She says: “I think there needs to be better conversations around how you approach that with someone.

“For me, I wish that there had been more of a conversation that looked like, ‘Hey, I have noticed that you’re… you haven’t eaten today? And I just wanted to check in and say that’s okay, or what can we do? I’m not judging you’.”

Laura, who had experienced an eating disorder as a child, said it felt very different this time round.

Recalling moments from when she was a teen, Laura said: “I used to sit with kitchen roll and slyly put food into it.

Laura said she was inundated by messages from fans asking about her weight lossCredit: instagram/@laurajayvaughan The star admitted she was putting her health in dangerCredit: instagram/@laurajayvaughan

“I grew up with a twin brother, and he had very normal eating habits, and I think there was a stark comparison – it was probably sounding alarms for my parents, and it was very much a fight at the dinner table.

“My poor mum would just be sitting there negotiating parts of the plate, like if you eat this bit, then you can leave the rest, and it must have been hell, it must have been a lot for them because every dinnertime was an absolute battle.

“I certainly wouldn’t have had the language or the understanding of it – I certainly wouldn’t have been able to articulate why that was, but now I have a good awareness of what it was.”

The reality star, who says her life is on “pause” after her recent , revealed that she was in denial for a long time.

She said: “At the end of 2025, I was hit with grief – loss after loss after loss.

“I spoke about how I lost my stepdad to cancer, and I’d lost my dad much younger to the same disease.

“I also don’t deal with heartbreak very well at all. So when that disappears and breaks down, it fills me with so much despair and so much anxiety that eating just becomes almost unbearable.

“I’d actually lost all control in my life. It was just one thing after the next – it was like a catalogue of disastrous events that just didn’t stop happening.

“I guess somewhere subconsciously, I knew that I was so stressed, I lived very much in a heightened state of dysregulation, that I’d forget to eat.

“The thought of putting food in my mouth is like, ‘Oh, I’ve got all this emotion’ where you feel things bubbling up inside you, you can’t even really comprehend adding food to that as well.

“There are two types of people, those who eat their feelings, or those who just feel sorrow. I very much am in the latter part.”

Struggling with fame

The former finance manager admitted her is the “worst it’s been in over a decade”.

Laura says: “I’d have panic attacks, and I would hit the deck. I will stress to the point where I can’t breathe, and many times I’d cancel events.”

“I’ve never really found where I fit in life, and I thought that appearing on a really beloved show watched by millions that I’d finally feel like I’d fit in, but the truth is, I didn’t.

“I felt further away, more disconnected from the world than ever, so I think within that sort of cycle of grief and loss and the loss of who I was, I think the eating disorder just manifested itself stronger than I wanted.”

Laura appeared on MAFS in 2023 and tied the knot with Arthur Poremba – but their relationship came to an end during final vows.

She decided to walk away from her husband following a series of rows.

Things went from bad to worse after that, and Laura said she’d try to get out of meeting up with friends if it involved food and would often bail.

But Laura said the turning point came when she met up with a friend who gently asked how she was coping.

She said: “My friend sounded the alarm, she said I was shrinking – not just physically but mentally.

“I’d become very self-censored and lost a lot of my voice as a result of what had been going on.

“I had not seen her in a while, and she came to visit me in London; her first response was, ‘Where’s the rest of you gone?’

“It’s been very much a gentle coaxing of a conversation, and sometimes I’ve felt okay enough to bring it up.

“She and my family were very supportive.”

Laura has since sought help and is regularly seeing a therapist amid her recovery journey.

She said: “I feel like I’m certainly coming out the other end of it, which is amazing, and I’m very thankful that I’ve been able to do that.

“I started having very serious conversations with myself.

“I’m in therapy at the minute, I do think that that has been a good starting point to talk through those feelings.”

Laura said she is taking things a step at a time and that things are still very much a “work in progress”, and she’s not looking too far into the future.

She says: “You don’t bounce back from these things like this, but I do feel liberated to be able to talk about it.

“I think when you’re living with quite a load, you feel encumbered by a lot by this heaviness, and when you’re able to talk about it without judgment, it feels like I don’t have to deal with this on my own.

This is not the first time that Laura has experienced mental and physical strain on her body.

Laura has previously spoken about tumultuous times in her life, including a heartbreaking medical abortion after unexpectedly finding out she was almost eight months .

In 2016, when she was 26, Laura was struggling to make sense of what had happened.

She endured the painful and heart-wrenching procedure after doctors told her she had been unknowingly putting her unborn foetus at high risk of “extreme” harm and severe birth defects by taking a powerful drug to treat her .

Laura said she finally got help after a close friend gently asked how she was copingCredit: Instagram / @laurajayvaughan Laura says she is taking things ‘a step at a time’ and has started ‘having very serious conversations with myself’Credit: Instagram Laura appeared on MAFS in 2023 and tied the knot with Arthur PorembaCredit: E4