BNTM contestant is forced to quit the show due to anxiety

A Britain’s Next Top Model contestant has been forced to pull out of the show after struggling to cope with her crippling anxiety.

Efi Muntoni-Clements, 21, quit the modelling contest after battling with body image issues which began when she was an impressionable teenager trying to make it in the cut-throat industry.

She has hit out at casting agents who told her she was ‘very round’ and encouraged her to lose weight as a teen – which resulted in her becoming ‘obsessed with calorie counting’.

Efi, from London, said she identified as a plus-size model during her time on the show despite being a slim size 10.

Speaking about her early days in the fashion industry, the 5ft 11in beauty told MailOnline FEMAIL: ‘I was signed with [a top London modelling agency] when I was 17 but I didn’t do anything because I had to lose weight and I wasn’t the right size for the agency.

‘My hips were about a 36 [UK size 8-10] and they wanted them to be 34 [size 6].

‘I had an eating problem at that time anyway before going with the agency, because I got scouted when I was 14 and they’d said “you are a bit too curvy” and I gave up on the modelling dream.

‘And then when I got to about 16 I started suffering with anxiety and stuff like that and I just lost the weight naturally, so I was scouted by [the agency] and then obviously they told me to lose a few inches on the hips and so I became really obsessed with it.

‘I was on a very strict diet and doing all these hot yoga and really making myself faint and that went on for a few months and in the end I just decided that I could not do it anymore.’ 

Efi became the sixth contestant to leave the 11th series of the show, missing out on a lucrative contract with Models 1 and a spread in Cosmopolitan magazine.

Efi said she identified as a plus-size model during her time on the show despite being a slim size 8 to 10 (pictured here during an animal cruelty-themed photo shoot on the show)

However Efi insists she has ‘no bad feelings’ towards the fashion industry, adding: ‘It’s always been that way, but after that it gave me a bad taste for modelling.

‘I did sign a contract with [an agency] and they bought my parents in and everything, but it’s just things like I walked in front of them in my underwear and they’d say “She’s very round” to my face, and I know that’s the industry but it’s quite harsh.’

Explaining how her insecurities developed into an obsession, Efi said: ‘I become obsessed with calorie counting and all stuff like that.

‘Even though I was a curve model I still got sent to castings for straight size models who were a size 6, because I was only a size 10 – I wasn’t a size 18 or anything.

‘And so I was still comparing myself to them in a way and I was doing a lot of underwear work and I feel like that was still criticising my body in a way and so I let the anxiety run away with me again.’

Efi (pictured before her dramatic haircut) told FEMAIL: ‘I was signed with [a London agency] when I was 17 but I didn’t do anything because I had to lose weight and I wasn’t the right size for the agency’

The 5ft 11in beauty (fourth left) with her fellow contestants insists she has ‘no bad feelings’ towards the fashion industry, adding: ‘It’s always been that way, but after that it gave me a bad taste for modelling’

Fellow contestants react to Efi’s shock departure. Speaking about her decision to leave, Efi revealed: ‘It was that constant pressure and in the beginning it was really exciting doing the challenges and stuff like that’

Speaking about her decision to leave, Efi revealed: ‘It was that constant pressure and in the beginning it was really exciting doing the challenges and stuff like that. 

‘But it got to the point where towards the end it felt like I would wake up and we would get [mail from judge Abbey Clancey] and it would say what the challenge is and rather than feeling excited I would just feel anxious and I just thought, “I can’t face going into that”. 

‘I think that it was the right decision for me to leave.’

And speaking about her plans for the future, Efi added: ‘I would love to be a curve model but not called a “curve” model, just a model working at my comfortable size and be a spokesperson for mental health and body diversity.’  

Thursday night’s episode also saw Girls Aloud star Kimberley Walsh join Abbey Clancy on the judging panel for the first time.

Earlier in the series, Efi took the drastic decision of shaving her head after being unhappy with her pixie crop during the makeover stage.  

Britain’s Next Top Model continues next Thursday at 9pm exclusively on Lifetime, available on Sky 156, Virgin 208, TalkTalk 329 and BT 329