beauty

Chontel Duncan has been "publicly humiliated" by a misleading pregorexia article.

Pregnant personal trainer Chontel Duncan has slammed a “misleading” article about “pregorexia” by the Courier Mail who she says tricked her into taking part.

Duncan, who owns a fitness company and promotes a healthy lifestyle on Instagram, said she was approached and interviewed by the News Corp outlet for what she thought was a positive article about pregnancy and fitness.

However, the finished product, which featured in Saturday’s paper and online was titled, “‘Pregorexia’ is fuelling body dissatisfaction, putting pregnant mum, bub at risk says experts”.

ADVERTISEMENT

The 29-year-old said she was “publicly humiliated” by the article, which painted her as a damaging role model for mums-to-be and accused her of contributing to an “emerging body image disorder” dubbed pregorexia.

“I was 100% misled to believe I was being given an opportunity to bring awareness to practising a healthy pregnancy,” Duncan said on Snapchat.

The mum, who is 23-weeks-pregnant with her second child, said she felt like she had let her one-year-old son Jeremiah down.

“I tried to put on a brave face and even believed I was fine… Reality eventually hit and I broke down.”

Listen: Michelle Bridges knows what it’s liked to be slammed for working out while pregnant.

“To be publicly humiliated was one thing, but to have my son involved was just awful… I felt like I had let him down…”

On Instagram, she called out the article’s author for tricking her into believing she was being asked to “display her passion for normalising one of the amazing benefits to living a healthy lifestyle prior to conceiving”.

The HIIT Australia founder said she wanted to encourage girls and women to cut out “all deadlines, unrealistic expectations, silly number chasing games” and simply enjoy exercising.

Instead, Duncan claims she was brought down by “money hungry papers” to “make a headline and grab some extra attention and readers”.

ADVERTISEMENT

How many more baby moons could we get away with ???? @lornajaneactive #lornajane #22weeks #secondpregnancy #hawaii #kauai

A post shared by Training EBOOK coming soon (@chontelduncan) on

“Shame on them for playing a part in social media trolling/bullying on such a large scale,” she wrote.

“Can you imagine how you’d feel if a well-known paper made a fool of you?”

Mamamia reached out to Chontel Duncan for comment, but she did not respond by time of publishing