Victoria Beckham told: ‘Your diet is poisoning you’

She’s always been incredibly strict when it comes to what she eats – sticking to a diet of mainly steamed fish and vegetables – but Victoria Beckham was horrified to be told that her supposedly healthy diet was actually harming her health. The star was forced to make changes after tests revealed she had “off the scale” levels of toxic mercury in her blood – the star was warned by medics that she was eating far too much swordfish and tuna, which can contain the highly poisonous methylmercury.

“Victoria had off the scale levels of mercury. So, doctors gave her a liver flush to help rid the body of toxins,” an insider said, after Posh took the tests during a trip to a luxury health spa in Germany last year. "She feels brilliant and is as lean and fit as ever.”

Now the designer – who has children Brooklyn, 21, Romeo,18, Cruz, 15, and nine-year-old Harper with husband David – has altered her diet to include more salmon and our source says she was given a wake-up call.

“Vic would always boast that she had the healthiest diet out of anyone she knew so it was quite a surprise to hear it could be harming her,” our insider says. “To hear that you could be poisoning yourself is quite worrying and she had no idea the levels in mercury in those types of fishes. Taking good care of herself is a priority to Vic so she took on all the advice and has made changes. But she didn’t want to relax her diet too much as she knows it’s what helps keep her slim and fit so she’s never going to be eating loads of pasta, meat and carbs for dinner. She still does what feels right for her.”

Victoria, 46, has always been quite open about her diet and exercise regime and admits she’s very strict and has to work hard to get her slim figure. She drinks apple cider vinegar each morning, before breakfast, which is normally a green smoothie or scrambled eggs with smoked salmon. Lunch is usually sushi and salad, while dinner is fish and steamed veg, even though David and the kids will have something different. But she is only human and still indulges by drinking red wine and tequila.

Check out: Victoria Beckham's transformation timeline

“I am very, very disciplined in the way that I work out, in what I eat,” she said in an interview two years ago. “That’s how I’m happiest. I expect a lot from my body – I’m 44, I’ve got four kids, I work a lot, I travel. For me to do all that, I have to eat healthily and work out…. I was vegan for over a year, but I just felt like I didn't have the energy that you need."

After giving birth to Brooklyn in 1999, Victoria lost a lot of weight and denied claims she was suffering from an eating disorder. And over the past few years she has really got into exercise, which has helped her figure get leaner and more toned.

Speaking about her workouts, she has previously said, that her day begins between 5.30am and 6am with a 7km run on the treadmill, which is "a mix of uphill fast walking, jogging, running. That’s the only time I watch TV – boxsets, documentaries – so I look forward to that. It takes 45 minutes." This is followed by a session with a personal trainer, "30 minutes legs, 30 minutes arms, toning and conditioning, then loads of planks and that kind of thing for my core… it’s really positive thing for me. It’s part of who I am now, and I really enjoy it.”

Read more in the latest issue of heat magazine - OUT NOW.