Vanessa Feltz has admitted she starved herself on ITV’s Celebrity Fit Club as she exposed the ‘horrific’ reality behind the show.
The 64-year-old broadcaster appeared on the hit program in 2004, which saw celebrities undergo grueling diet and exercise regimes before their weight was publicly revealed each week by presenter Dale Winton, who died in 2018.
The series also featured famous faces including Alison Hammond, Coleen Nolan, the late Ann Widdecombe, Julie Goodyear and the late Freddie Starr during the series.
Vanessa’s admission comes amid new scrutiny into some of the biggest reality shows of the early 1990s – which were infamous for heavily promoting toxic diet culture by using weight as a punchline and normalizing extreme thinness.
Lifting the lid on the efforts she put in, Vanessa admitted that she would stop eating or drinking the day before the weigh-in and then give herself a tough fitness class.
“They would publicly weigh you on the show,” Vanessa said on Andrew Gold’s Heretics podcast this week. “Dale Winton, of very good memory, would weigh you and your weight would be announced to the waiting world.
Vanessa Feltz has admitted she starved herself on ITV’s Celebrity Fit Club as she exposed the ‘horrific’ reality behind the show (pictured on the show in 2004)
Her admission comes amid new scrutiny into some of the biggest reality shows of the early 1990s – which were infamous for heavily promoting toxic diet culture by using weight as a punchline and normalizing extreme thinness (pictured in September 2025)
‘And so the day before I didn’t eat anything or drink anything, not even water. And then I went to a really tough fitness class. And then I was weighed by Dale Winton.”
She said the punishing routine could cause the scale to show that she had lost a few pounds — only for the weight to immediately return once she rehydrated and ate after the cameras stopped rolling.
Vanessa continued, “I would be starving and completely dehydrated. So I’d have a drink and a sandwich and I’d already gained the two pounds he was just celebrating with the nation I’d lost.’
The former This Morning presenter described her experience on Celebrity Fit Club as ‘horrific, absolutely horrific’ and said public criticism of her weight became so intense that strangers would even scold her for eating.
Recalling one incident, she said she could only take “a bite of an apple” when someone shouted at her from a passing van to put the apple down.
The mother-of-two added: “And then you think, ‘Oh, it’s just an apple. And I haven’t eaten anything in days.’ It was something like that. Horrible, horrible.’
Vanessa said she had dramatically lost and regained weight for years in full view of the public, describing herself as “yo-yoing like absolute nonsense” as newspaper reports celebrated her slimming down.
She recalled periods of “barely eating and exercising like a devil” for up to a year to lose weight, only to regain it after allowing herself foods she had previously denied herself.
Vanessa, 64, appeared on the hit show in 2004, where celebrities had to undergo grueling diet and exercise regimes before their weight was publicly announced each week by presenter Dale Winton
She said she had dramatically lost and regained weight for years in full view of the public, describing herself as ‘yo-yoing like absolute rubbish’ (pictured in 2009)
Her comments shed new light on the pressure surrounding the Celebrity Fit Club, which closed in 2006. The American adaptation on VH1 ended its seventh and final season in 2010.
Last year, the programme’s former therapist, Marisa Peer, spoke about extreme tactics used by some participants to try to ensure they registered a loss on the scale, saying some would go without food prior to the weigh-in.
She did not identify Vanessa as one of the participants who employed the tactic.
The broader reappraisal of reality television of the era has also seen other hugely popular shows reexamined for the treatment of their participants.
Last year, the Netflix documentary Fit for TV: The Reality of The Biggest Loser revisited the controversial American weight-loss series and the punishment methods the participants faced.
Meanwhile, this year’s Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model sparked a new reckoning over allegations of body-shaming, humiliation and the treatment of the young aspiring models who appeared on the hugely popular fashion competition.
Vanessa said her own years of repeatedly losing and regaining weight ultimately contributed to her decision to undergo weight-loss surgery.
She had a gastric band in 2010, but later suffered complications when it became stuck in her liver and had to be removed.
Vanessa said her own years of repeatedly losing and regaining weight ultimately contributed to her decision to undergo weight-loss surgery (pictured this year)
In 2019, she underwent a gastric bypass at the same time, after initially being shocked by the prospect of the more invasive surgery.
Vanessa has previously spoken openly about regretting the timing of the surgery following the rise of weight loss injections such as Mounjaro and Wegovy.
Addressing the topic again on the podcast, she joked that if she had known the drugs were coming, she would have avoided paying “an absolute fortune” for surgery and instead would have had “a few shots” and “been skinny.”
She also gave a graphic account of life with her gastric band, calling it “an absolute farce” and saying it made some solid foods extremely difficult to swallow.
Vanessa claimed that she once tried to eat a single apple on a trip from Manchester to London because each bite was so hard to eat.
Reflecting on the years of public attention surrounding her changing body, Vanessa said the experience had been very painful.
When asked how it felt when people were cruel to her because of her weight, she simply replied, “Horrible. Evidently. Terrible.’
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