Footy star reveals shocking health battle behind her support for the AFL's controversial ban on tests that 'fat-shame' players

Essendon star Eloise Gardner has lifted the lid on her health battles as she fired back at footy legend Matthew Lloyd for slamming the league's recent move to ban skinfold testing.

Gardner took to social after Lloyd and fellow commentator Kane Cornes both condemned the decision by the AFL.

'Good riddance! The outrage to this is atrocious,' she tweeted.

'Between my 1st & 2nd VFLW seasons I lost 10kg, became obsessed with tracking my weight & food to the point of borderline having an eating disorder + was over-exercising. 

'The pressures on young athletes are already enough.

'I remember being celebrated for how hard I'd worked over the off-season and the praise I received. 

'It very quickly embed the belief that my weight determined my self worth. 

'I have no doubt my obsession with pushing my body to its limits, whilst not fuelling my body appropriately and neglecting other aspects of my mental and emotional wellbeing was a key factor in my current chronic illness.'

Gardner suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome so badly that she was left bed-bound for more than a month. 

'This illness is tricky enough as it is, throw in being asthmatic and having ADHD which, outside of medication, are both largely managed through exercise that I can no longer do... it adds a further complication,' she wrote on her blog. 

Gardner added that she 'wore her weight loss 'like a f***ing gold medal' at the time - and that she couldn't see she was actually unhealthy.

Her lengthy tweet was in response to Bombers champion Lloyd declaring 'the world has gone mad' after confirmation the AFL has banned skinfold testing.

'[In my career] I was above the [skinfold] level for a period of time,' Lloyd said on Channel Nine's Footy Classified.

'It was a massive wake-up call ... and then I was at training the next six Sundays until I got myself right.'

Cornes questioned whether banning skinfold tests for emerging players was the best way to prepare them for the rigours of professional sport.

'You have to wonder whether that prepares them the best possible way for the challenges that they are going to face once they get into the system,' he said. 

The decision from the AFL is aimed primarily at protecting the mental health of young players and limiting the stigma around weight and body fat, plus the notion all athletes must present at training at a certain level of physical condition.

According to veteran journalist Caroline Wilson, no AFL clubs were consulted about the decision, which was revealed in a memo.

Essendon boss Xavier Campbell also found the AFL's decision baffling.

'I could sort of understand it at a grassroots level, I think there's some merit there, but we are a performance-based industry,' he told SEN.

'I'm not sure we've got any skinfold metrics that are included in contracts these days, but it still is a big part of the testing that the high performance does on the players.

'There are different ways to go about it, body mass index and everything else like that....but I'd say there's still got to be some sort of form of assessment that needs to be included in that part of the game.'