Alison Hammond has recently made headlines after losing 11 stone and reversing a pre-diabetic diagnosis.
“My mum had type 2 diabetes and she was worried for me, so when I then found out that I was pre-diabetic, that was frightening,” the presenter of This Morning told Good Housekeeping UK.
The presenter of This Morning weighed 28 stone at her heaviest. She decided to embrace a healthy lifestyle, rather than using weight loss injections, which have been on the rise in recent years.
In 2024, around 5 per cent of Britons had used an injectable glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist, a medication known under brand names such as Wegovy, Ozempic and Mounjaro.
“I think that, for people who need to use them, they're a good thing - but for me, as soon as I hear any scare story, I get frightened,” Hammond told Good Housekeeping.
“So I haven't wanted to use them, but that's not to say I wouldn't in the future, and I certainly wouldn't look down on anyone who did.”
So how did Hammond lose so much weight?
What was Hammond’s weight loss regime?
Following her pre-diabetic diagnosis, Hammond had an epiphany. “I thought: 'I have to be an adult about this'. The sweets had to stop – and the fatty foods,” she told Good Housekeeping.
Rather than opting for weight loss medication, Hammond decided to make changes to her diet.
She starts her day with an immunity-boosting ginger shot and a hearty Full English breakfast, comprised of eggs, bacon and sausages.
If she’s working, she’ll opt for Caribbean food for lunch, such as rice, peas and chicken. But if she’s at home, she’ll enjoy a nourishing home-cooked dish like lasagne.
Hammond also does sports to keep fit, including exercising with a personal trainer twice a week and doing home workouts such as weight training.
In the evenings, she also enjoys homemade meals. “If I'm staying in I'll rustle up curried goat and rice or chicken fried rice,” she told the Sunday Times magazine:
However, Hammond has emphasised that while she’s adopted a healthy lifestyle, she hasn’t cut anything out completely and instead focuses on “moderation”.
“I don't deny myself anything, I eat everything, but in moderation,” she added to the publication.
Will it work for you?
Eating a healthy diet and doing regular exercise are known to be effective ways to lose weight, however, scientists believe that it may be easier for some people to lose weight than others.
Researchers from Kobe University in Japan have proposed that people who struggle to lose weight from exercise may be lacking variants of the protein PGC-1α, which helps regulate the body’s metabolism.
There may be other reasons why some people struggle to lose weight. “Some individuals have a genetic predisposition to retain weight or develop obesity, which can make conventional weight loss strategies less effective,” Dr Claire Phipps, GP and BMS menopause specialist at London Gynaecology, tells The Standard.
“Chronic stress, sleep disturbances, emotional eating, and mental health concerns such as depression or anxiety can disrupt hunger regulation and reduce the consistency needed for lifestyle changes to be effective.”
