Former footy star Moana Hope speaks out against senior club member who body shamed her

AFLW star Moana Hope has revealed she was body shamed by a senior club member who reportedly told her to "eat less chocolate."

Hope who has had a glittering football career, having played stints at Collingwood and North Melbourne, admitted that it has taken years for her to feel confident in her own skin.

In a series of Instagram stories posted to her account on Thursday, Hope said, "I don't even know how to say this but when I played AFLW, my first year of AFLW, I had someone super senior, super high up at the club pull me aside and said to me, 'you're fat, you need to eat less chocolates and more salads.'"

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She continued, "That is a legitimate thing that was said to me. I was in complete shock. I had gone my entire life, I never ever had to worry about body image issues or anything like that."

Hope told followers that she had grown up in a family that never viewed body image in a negative way.

"Nobody, you know, my mum never said anything, my family, the people around, no one ever spoke about their body image in a negative way, or mine, so I'd never ever had something like that," she said.

The 33-year-old said she was left "shocked" by the situation, saying, "I was at a new club, I was really excited and to be told from somebody I really respected something so hard and so not related to what I was doing there was full on."

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Hope revealed that she became a shell of herself after the comments were made saying she became too self conscious to get into a sports bra or into the pool during recovery sessions.

"I was worried my body wasn't good enough for them and I seriously started to develop some body image issues of what it should look like," she continued.

The former footy star recently announced her pregnancy in December and remarked that pregnancy had changed the way she looked at herself saying, "I've been in a sports bra for the last three weeks and I think I have an amazing body."

She added, "I think my body is absolutely perfect and I've not felt that way since before I started AFLW."

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Reflecting on the body shaming comments that were made to her, Hope said "I wish I'd never let someone's opinion do that to me and I wish it didn't take being pregnant for me to come to this realisation because I feel like I've just lost five years of just being me, like I've always just been me for my entire life."

Hope left her football career behind in 2019 so she could focus on starting a family with wife Isabella Carlstrom.