Vanessa Feltz has revealed she starved herself and avoided water before public weigh-ins on ITV's Celebrity Fit Club, describing the experience as "horrific, absolutely horrific."
The 64-year-old broadcaster took part in the 2004 series alongside celebrities including Alison Hammond and Freddie Starr, with the late Dale Winton hosting the programme. Speaking on Andrew Gold's Heretics podcast, she described how contestants were weighed publicly and their results announced.
"Dale Winton, of blessed memory, would weigh you and your weight would be announced to the waiting world," she said. "And so for the day before, I would eat nothing and drink nothing, not even water. And then I would go to a really heavy sort of fitness class. And then I would go and be weighed by Dale Winton."
Public scrutiny and criticism
Feltz said she was "starving to death" and "totally dehydrated" after losing a couple of pounds on the scales, only to regain the weight once she ate. She recalled being chastised by a member of the public while eating an apple, with someone shouting from a passing van: "Put it down!"
"And you think: 'Oh, it's only an apple. And I haven't eaten anything at all for days.' It was that sort of thing. Horrid, horrible," she commented.
Long-term weight struggles and surgery
The Channel 5 star, who split from fiancé Ben Ofoedu three years ago after discovering he had been unfaithful, said she spent years on yo-yo diets in the public eye. She described "yo-yoing like absolute b******y" and recalled times when she would "barely eat and exercised like a fiend" to lose weight.
Her unstable weight led her to have surgery. She had a gastric band fitted in 2010, but it had to be removed after becoming entangled in her liver. In 2019, she underwent a gastric bypass.
Feltz has previously admitted regretting the timing of her surgery following the rise of weight-loss injections such as Mounjaro and Wegovy. She joked on her podcast that had she known the drugs were in development, she would have avoided paying "an absolute fortune" for surgery and instead had "a few jabs" and looked "skinny as hell."
The Mirror has contacted ITV for comment.
