Amanda Owen has admitted that she “just shut down”(Image: Channel 5 )

Amanda Owen has confessed that she “just shut down” whilst discussing a harrowing health struggle and the significant “price” she’s paid for living in the public eye. The Yorkshire Shepherdess offered frank revelations about her fight with an eating disorder following a major relationship breakdown.

The Channel 5 star, featured in Our Yorkshire Farm and Our Farm Next Door, is mother to nine children and resides at the isolated 2,000-acre Ravenseat Farm in Swaledale, Yorkshire.

Whilst no longer sharing a home with her ex-partner Clive, Amanda still runs the farm and raises their children with him, having separated in 2022 after 22 years of marriage.

During a recent conversation, Amanda disclosed that she suffered from her eating disorder in the wake of her separation and has only recently begun to recover.

Amanda opened up about a devastating health battle and the heavy “price” she’s had to pay(Image: Channel 5)

The struggle wouldn’t be the sole challenge the mother-of-nine has encountered lately. She also acknowledged that four separate mental health complaints became “smooshed into one” alongside the eating disorder.

Amanda told the Mail: “I just shut down. Physical and mental health are intertwined and anxiety, depression, paranoia, agoraphobia and an eating disorder were all smooshed into one.”

To compound matters, Amanda had to endure cruel jibes from online trolls regarding her weight loss, recalling one particularly nasty comment where she was described as a “bag of bones”, and still faces ongoing trolling issues.

She added: “I remember sitting in the sheep pens in the dark, just hiding. It’s the price you pay for living your life in the open, for being observed. It’s like having a post mortem before you’re dead.”

Amanda went into greater detail about the eating disorder, admitting that she had “always had issues” with eating and food, something which became “amplified” due to her pregnancies.

Amanda admitted that she’d “always had issues” with eating and food(Image: Channel 5)

She explained the adverse impact of stardom on her health. Amanda also revealed that the “media intrusion got to me”, as she detailed how the uncertainty of what might occur next impacted both her physical and mental health.

In fact, Amanda revealed she was constantly in and out of hospital, describing it as a “critical time”, and, in a shocking confession, Clive said there were nights when he feared Amanda wouldn’t be there the next morning.

The television personality then recalled experiencing difficulty swallowing and vomiting blood one evening. She added: “The eating disorder has always bubbled up beneath the surface but I never imagined it would happen to that degree.”

However, in an update that will serve as welcome relief to fans, Amanda added that she’s, thankfully, “out of the woods”, and, although she noted that you “have your moments”, she’s “here to tell the tale”.

In related news, Amanda also recently shared the experience of her first childbirth and how “it all went wrong” as she ended up in hospital, despite planning a home birth, at a time when the UK was in the grips of the foot-and-mouth crisis.

Speaking on Kate Thornton’s White Wine Question Time, she recounted: “Yeah, and it all went wrong, and she got stuck and I ended up having to go into hospital, literally, with a baby completely stuck.

“I didn’t know that your body goes into a permanent contraction, but it does. It’s not good. I had the caesarean, and of course it was, like, well, you know, now natural birth could be an issue.”