When Diets Go Horribly Wrong

When Diets Go Horribly Wrong

Executive Producer
1st TX: 13th February 2020, 10pm CH5.
We’ve all been on a diet at one point or other in our lives, and with the rise of social media, there’s no getting away from the fact that we’re all under more pressure than ever before to look good.
When done right, diets can have positive health benefits as well as being life affirming. However, when done wrong they can end in disaster. In this 60 minute special, narrated by Claire Sweeney, we have first-hand accounts from real people whose diets ended up deeply affecting their lives.
Highlights include a young juicer, Clare, whose body reacted badly to her liquid-only diet.
There’s ripped thirtysomething Joe, a young fitness fanatic wound up with kidney stones after extreme ‘bulking up’.
Another dieter, Lexi went from a size 14 to a size 6 in an attempt to look good in her wedding dress. Her diet spiralled out of control and her weight plummeted, but Lexi was so tired and ill she burst into tears at the slightest thing and to top it all her husband left her.
When Paul lost his mum he spiralled into a world of anxiety, depression and comfort eating. At his heaviest, Paul was a whopping 51 stone. For health reasons, he decided to have a gastric band fitted and lost a staggering 30 stone. The trouble is, now, he’s left with 3 stone of excess skin which he cannot get removed on the NHS. Even after his weight loss transformation, Paul says he is ashamed to look at himself in the mirror.
Writer Eve opens up about the pressures of working in the fashion industry surrounded by “perfect” bodies. Her story involves her taking on-board so-called fad diets via social media. Influenced by online wellness stars peddling questionable nutrition advice, Eve culled her favourite foods such as bread, milk and meat and got so poorly she feared she would suffer a sudden heart attack.
Plus, there’s the tragic tale of Eloise Parry, well-documented in the press back in 2018, as she had been addicted to toxic slimming pills containing dinitrophenol (DNP). We have an exclusive interview with her sister Becky who opens up about her late sister’s obsession with her diet.
Expert interviews include GP Dr Ellie Cannon, workout queen Rosemary Conley, fitness expert Kris Boyson and celebrities Nadia Sawalha, Ampika Pickston and former Big Brother star, Josie Gibson.