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Former Love Island star Anton Danyluk has shared he quit bodybuilding after the sport left him with intense body image hang-ups.
Back in 2019, the 28-year-old appeared on the seventh season of the reality dating show where he was partnered up with Belle Hassan before they were dumped just before the finale.
In the years since he’s become a gym owner and fitness coach, regularly offering advice to his one million social media followers.
But while he’s proud of the transformation he’s taken from a once overweight schoolboy, he’s now admitted he’s still struggling with his body image.
Appearing on Good Morning Britain on Thursday to speak about his upcoming BBC documentary Anton Danyluk on Body Shame, the former reality star spoke about despite the fact he appears to have the ‘perceived version of the perfect male body’ he still needs to keep himself in check.
‘I still struggle with body image issues…it’s the pressures of being on social media and in the public eye,’ he said.
‘There is always a pressure to look a certain way.’
Anton Danyluk has spoken about his body image battles on Good Morning Britain (Picture: ITV)
While Anton said he was proud to have a platform ‘I could never have dreamed of’, which he wanted to use to inspire others, he has changed his mindset on how far he wants to push his body.
‘I have pulled back in a lot of ways,’ he said.
‘I was into bodybuilding, and it was the worst I ever felt in terms of I was always seeking perfection.
‘You always want to be a little bit leaner, you always want to be a little bit fitter. I love my healthy lifestyle and I train and I eat well, but I now enjoy myself more.’
In the interview Anton also spoke about being picked on in school, which he put down to the fact he was ‘mixed race and overweight’, which he said made him an ‘easy’ target.
He said he quit bodybuilding after getting too caught up in the sport (Picture: Anton Danyluk/ Instagram)
He also shared that despite having a love for football, he eventually quit after feeling self-conscious about taking his top off in front of teammates in the changerooms.
However, after his mother eventually convinced him to join a gym, Anton said he noticed how it drastically improved both his physical and mental health.
But Anton said there was now a ‘lot of pressure’ on teenage boys to look a certain way, which was concerning.
‘By doing this documentary what I started to realise was that by posting my photos [with his shirt off and in a gym] I could be making young boys feel insecure with their own body image because they feel like they should be looking that way,’ he said.
Taking part in the filming spurred him to change his own social media practices, by now ‘putting more context’ around his photos by including disclaimers that everyone’s bodies are different.
He added he wanted to remind people that the perfect body for people was ‘their own’.
‘I think focus on bettering yourself but to also not compare to other people,’ he said.
Anton appeared on Love Island in 2019 (Picture: ITV/REX/Shutterstock)
However, he did admit he sometimes felt like a hypocrite because he still does the same ‘every day’.
Last year Anton said he regretted going on Love Island after appearing on the show put him in the firing line for trolling.
He said: ‘It’s funny because I was bullied when I was a kid for being overweight and that was the main reason that I physically got into living a healthier lifestyle.
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‘Now, all these years later I’m getting bullied in a different form. I don’t think I would have been able to deal with it as well as I do now if I’d never gone through that when I was younger.’
When speaking to Mail Online, he added he would be ‘lying’ if he said it didn’t affect him at times, but he did his best to ignore it, and instead focused on doing good with the platform he’d developed.
Good Morning Britain airs weekdays from 6am on ITV.
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‘There is always pressure to look a certain way.’
