{"id":104810,"date":"2025-10-06T06:26:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T06:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/104810\/"},"modified":"2025-10-06T06:26:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T06:26:10","slug":"leinster-and-ireland-rugby-star-andrew-porter-on-his-teenage-eating-disorder-and-suicidal-thoughts-in-his-new-memoir-heart-on-my-sleeve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/104810\/","title":{"rendered":"Leinster and Ireland rugby star Andrew Porter on his teenage eating disorder and suicidal thoughts in his new memoir Heart on My Sleeve"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">\nIn a powerful extract from his memoir, \u2018Heart on My Sleeve\u2019, Leinster and Ireland rugby star Andrew Porter reveals his struggles with disordered eating and suicidal thoughts in the wake of the loss of his beloved mother\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Leinster and Ireland rugby star Andrew Porter. Photo: Alex Sheridan\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/ridan_2409_Mov_1575.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Leinster and Ireland rugby star Andrew Porter. Photo: Alex Sheridan<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">My eating disorder crept up on me.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">It wasn\u2019t as if my parents said anything: my dad was a big man and had played rugby for Kilkenny College, Carlow and Old Wesley \u2013 in fact, many of his contemporaries would tell me they used to dread him, because in spite of his size, he was a back, so he\u2019d be running over the top to destroy you. I idolised my dad and wanted to eat dad-sized portions of food, but I was merely a schoolboy with a big appetite. Mum had a completely normal attitude towards food, but somehow I\u2019d internalised this idea that in order to fit in, I had to shrink myself, physically and mentally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a powerful extract from his memoir, \u2018Heart on My Sleeve\u2019, Leinster and Ireland rugby star Andrew Porter&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104811,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[18,19,17,34991,12861,4746,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-104810","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-irish-rugby-football-union-irfu","12":"tag-leinster-rugby","13":"tag-life-magazine","14":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}