Vanessa Feltz has claimed she went without food while taking part in ITV’s Celebrity Fit Club, as she opened up about what she described as the deeply troubling reality behind the once-popular weight-loss show.
The 64-year-old broadcaster joined the programme in 2004, when well-known contestants were placed on strict diet and exercise plans before their weight was revealed on television each week by host Dale Winton, who died in 2018.
Across its run, Celebrity Fit Club also featured a string of familiar names, including Alison Hammond, Coleen Nolan, Ann Widdecombe, Julie Goodyear and the late Freddie Starr.
Feltz’s comments arrive as early 2000s reality TV faces renewed criticism, with many viewers and former participants reassessing shows that turned weight loss into entertainment, often reinforcing damaging diet culture and making body size a public spectacle.
Speaking about the pressure she felt at the time, Vanessa said she would avoid eating or drinking anything before the weekly weigh-in, then push herself through an intense exercise class in an effort to affect the result.
Appearing on Andrew Gold’s Heretics podcast this week, she recalled that contestants were weighed in front of everyone on the show, with Dale Winton announcing the number to viewers at home.
Vanessa Feltz has said she deprived herself of food during her time on ITV’s Celebrity Fit Club, while reflecting on the show’s disturbing behind-the-scenes pressures (pictured on the programme in 2004)
Her remarks come as early Noughties reality television continues to be re-examined for promoting toxic diet culture, treating weight as entertainment and celebrating extreme thinness (pictured in September 2025)
‘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.’
She said the punishing routine could make the scales show she had lost a couple of pounds – only for the weight to immediately return once she rehydrated and ate after the cameras stopped rolling.
Vanessa continued: ‘I’d be starving to death and totally dehydrated. So then I’d have a drink and a sandwich and then I’d already put back on the two pounds that he was just celebrating with the nation that I’d lost.’
The former This Morning presenter described her experience on Celebrity Fit Club as ‘horrific, absolutely horrific’, saying the public scrutiny surrounding her weight became so intense that strangers would even berate her for eating.
Recalling one incident, she said she could take ‘a bite of an apple’ only for someone to shout at her from a passing van to put it down.
The mother-of-two added: ‘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.’
Vanessa said she spent years dramatically losing and regaining weight in the full glare of the public eye, describing herself as ‘yo-yoing like absolute buggery’ as newspaper coverage celebrated her becoming slimmer.
She recalled periods when she would spend as long as a year ‘barely eating and exercising like a fiend’ to lose weight, only to put it back on after allowing herself foods she had previously denied herself.
Vanessa, 64, appeared on the hit show in 2004, where celebs were put through gruelling diet and exercise regimes before having their weight announced publicly each week by host Dale Winton
She said she spent years dramatically losing and regaining weight in the full glare of the public eye, describing herself as ‘yo-yoing like absolute buggery’ (pictured in 2009)
Her comments shed fresh light on the pressures surrounding Celebrity Fit Club, which concluded in 2006. The American adaptation on VH1 finished its seventh and final season in 2010.
Last year, the programme’s former therapist Marisa Peer spoke about extreme tactics used by some contestants to try to ensure they registered a loss on the scales, saying some would go without food ahead of weigh-ins.
She did not identify Vanessa as one of the contestants who employed the tactic.
The wider reassessment of reality television from the era has also seen other hugely popular shows revisited over the treatment of their contestants.
Last year, Netflix documentary Fit for TV: The Reality of The Biggest Loser revisited the controversial US weight-loss series and the punishing methods endured by contestants.
Meanwhile, this year’s Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model sparked a fresh 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 eventually contributed to her decision to undergo weight-loss surgery.
She had a gastric band fitted in 2010, but later suffered complications when it became embedded in her liver and had to be removed.
Vanessa said her own years of repeatedly losing and regaining weight eventually contributed to her decision to undergo weight-loss surgery (pictured this year)
In 2019, she underwent a gastric bypass at the same time, having initially been horrified at the prospect of the more invasive operation.
Vanessa has previously spoken openly about regretting the timing of the surgery following the rise of weight-loss injections such as Mounjaro and Wegovy.
Revisiting the subject on the podcast, she joked that had she known the drugs were coming she would have avoided paying ‘an absolute fortune’ for surgery and instead had ‘a few jabs’ and been ‘skinny as hell’.
She also gave a graphic account of life with her gastric band, branding it ‘an absolute farce’ and saying it made some solid foods extremely difficult to swallow.
Vanessa claimed she once tried to eat a single apple throughout a journey from Manchester to London because each bite was so difficult to get down.
Reflecting on the years of public attention surrounding her changing body, Vanessa said the experience had been deeply painful.
Asked how it felt when people were cruel to her about her weight, she replied simply: ‘Horrible. Obviously. Horrible.’
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