There is something almost quietly defiant about the way Susannah Constantine posted that holiday photograph. A cobalt-blue swimsuit. A boat somewhere sunny. And a caption that did not pretend to be anything other than what it was — honest, slightly self-deprecating, and completely unsentimental. She listed her own flaws before anyone else could: the muffin top, the crepey skin, the G cups she describes as shoulder-splitting. She even admitted she was sucking in her stomach. And then, almost as an aside, she mentioned she now weighs 147 pounds after five months without refined sugar. No weight-loss drugs. No medical intervention. Just a decision, made sometime around March, to stop eating something she had come to depend on in ways that frightened her.
Constantine is probably best remembered as one half of the BBC’s What Not to Wear duo, the fashion programme she fronted alongside Trinny Woodall through the early 2000s. But she has spent the years since building a rather different kind of public identity — one defined less by hemlines and more by an unusual willingness to talk about the parts of herself that are harder to style. Her sobriety. Her mental health. And now, this. The chocolate.
What she described in a piece for The Sunday Times was not casual overindulgence. It was something closer to ritual. She had started hiding sweets, structuring her days around when she could eat them, choosing nights alone with chocolate and a box set over going out for dinner with friends. She compared it directly to the behaviours she remembered from before she got sober — the way she used to seek out heavy drinkers to make her own drinking feel normal. Chocolate had become, she said, her quieter equivalent. That is not the kind of comparison you make lightly, and she clearly did not.
The turning point came through a friend. Lulu Hutley, a former flatmate, essentially bundled her off to Portugal and handed her over to a nutritionist named Edna, who supervised what Constantine called a full detox. She describes being thrown, blindfolded, into a nutritional abyss. There is something almost funny about it — the involuntary intervention, the dramatic language — but underneath it sits something real. She recognised it, she said, as divine intervention. And it worked. Three months in, a stone lighter, she found she no longer craved the Lindt bars she had once been unable to go a single day without.
It’s worth pausing on that detail, because it does feel remarkable. Not the weight loss itself — a stone over twelve weeks is not unusual — but the disappearance of the craving. Celebrity nutritionist Gabriela Peacock, who spoke to Women’s Health about the story, is careful to note that “sugar addiction” is not a clinical diagnosis, though she is equally careful to say that does not make the cravings any less real. What Constantine experienced sounds less like a diet and more like a rewiring of habit, which is considerably harder and considerably less discussed.
By July, five months in, she had lost further ground and felt, by her own account, clearer-headed and more energetic. Whether that is the sugar reduction itself, better sleep, improved hydration, or simply the psychological effect of achieving something difficult, it’s hard to say with certainty. Probably all of it, working together in ways that are impossible to fully untangle.
What Peacock cautions against is the all-or-nothing mindset. Eliminate everything and forbidden foods often become more appealing, not less. Constantine herself still eats dates and honey, so her approach is more accurately described as cutting refined sugar rather than abolishing sweetness entirely. That distinction matters. This was not a punishment. It was a recalibration.
It’s hard not to notice that Constantine talks about all of this with the same unselfconscious frankness she once brought to pointing out a bad trouser choice on afternoon television. There is no transformation narrative being sold here, no before-and-after glow. She is 64, she still has crepey skin, and she is fine saying so. That kind of honesty, in the current environment of curated wellness content, feels almost refreshing enough to be its own form of health advice.
FAQs
1. How much weight did Susannah Constantine lose?
She lost approximately one stone (14 lbs) over around 12 weeks.
2. Did Susannah Constantine use weight-loss drugs?
No — she achieved her results without any medication or injections.
3. What food did Susannah Constantine cut out to lose weight?
She eliminated refined sugar from her diet entirely.
4. Who helped Susannah Constantine with her weight loss?
Friend Lulu Hutley arranged a Portugal detox supervised by nutritionist Edna.
5. How much does Susannah Constantine weigh now?
She currently weighs 147 lbs (10st 7lb) after five months sugar-free.
