Posh says she punched husband over kissing story

"Posh Spice" Victoria Beckham tells in her new book how she hit her football-star husband David Beckham after media reports that he had kissed another woman.

In another revelation from her biography Beckham has admitted for the first time that she has suffered from an eating disorder that dates from her early days with the Spice Girls, when their image-makers ordered the pop stars to thin down.

Beckham says her eating problems began in the early days of the Spice Girls after she was advised to lose weight.

She blames former bandmate Geri Halliwell, who has also admitted she suffered from eating disorders, for her subsequent obsession with food.

"Geri knew that [fellow Spice Girl] Mel C and I had been told we could both do with losing a couple of pounds so she started encouraging us to get up early and go jogging," she reveals. "Then it moved on to food. Geri would say things such as, 'Don't put sauces on food,' that low-fat things were just as good and that I could try not eating so much."

Beckham says she became obsessed with her appearance and kept checking the size of her bottom in mirrors, but it was only when the band stopped sharing a house that her dieting became completely obsessive.

"I began living on vegetables and nothing else," she said. "I used to chop up bowls of spinach and carrots and mangetout [snow peas] and steam them. Or I'd just eat peas - a whole family pack of Birds Eye at one sitting."

She said when the band toured Japan she couldn't find the vegetables she liked - just "weird slimy mushrooms" - so she stopped eating altogether and was pleased to see the weight just drop off.

Beckham began forcing herself to eat a balanced diet only when she became pregnant.

Soon after the birth of son Brooklyn, who is now 2, she again lost a lot of weight, which she blames on food allergies and a blood sugar problem.

In another extract from the book, Beckham says that when she read in newspapers that her husband had kissed another woman while she was pregnant and on tour with the Spice Girls, "I just exploded and punched David in the face."

She said she "hit him so hard I cut the inside of his mouth", despite her husband repeatedly denying the newspaper allegations.

The allegations hit their marriage so hard that they both considered suicide, she added.

Beckham said she eventually realised she was acting like "a spoiled brat". She blamed her violent reaction on her physical condition.

"I was pregnant and my hormones were all over the place," she said.

Beckham's autobiography will be published next Thursday - just 11 days before a rival and unauthorised biography hits the shelves.

Victoria's Secrets, written by Virginia Blackburn, is based on interviews with ex-boyfriends, friends and even former dance teachers.

The book aims to tell all about Posh Spice, portraying her as a ruthlessly ambitious woman who lets nothing stand in her way in the pursuit of fame.

Beckham's own book is being marketed as an insight into "what it's like to be one half of the most-watched couple in Britain and how it feels to be the target of so much adoration and envy".

A master at self-publicity, Beckham has already made a fortune out of marketing herself. OK! magazine reportedly paid £1 million ($3.25 million) for exclusive pictures of her 1999 wedding to the Manchester United and England soccer star - in which the couple was shown sitting like royalty on red and gold thrones.

Her recently launched website also played on fans' desire to delve into details about the star's private life with her son and husband, taking them on a cartoon mock-up tour of her mansion dubbed "Beckingham Palace".

- REUTERS

Victoria Beckham's official site