Adele Roberts has opened up about her five stone weight loss after admitting she was "clinically obese”.
The former Radio 1 presenter and I’m A Celebrity..Get Me Out Of Here! contestant says she found herself getting sick a lot and struggling with knee pain when she decided to make a change. It prompted Adele to overhaul her lifestyle, becoming more active and eating less junk food.
The 45-year-old, who overcame bowel cancer in 2022, says she started to see “food as fuel” instead of a way to mask her emotions. The switch to a healthier lifestyle saw Adele take up running, and in 2024 she set the Guinness World Record as the fastest woman with a stoma bag, finishing the London Marathon in 3hrs 30.
Discussing her weight loss on the Monday Mile podcast with Aimee Fuller, Adele said: “I’ve had a long journey and a big struggle in terms of body image. I used to be very overweight, didn’t have very good habits, and I was all about the pies, and the burgers, and the late night kebabs.
“I used to have a lot of trouble managing my emotions and I think I used to eat instead of dealing with life and that manifested on my body - I didn’t really take care of myself. I had to change my habits really because I was getting really sick, and ill, and it was getting to the point where my knees were starting to give way.
“I was clinically obese, I had lots of bodyfat and I just sort of thought ‘I can’t live like this anymore, I need to start changing my habits’ and that’s what I did. I didn’t really go on a diet, I just changed my lifestyle and I used food for fuel instead of using it to cover my emotions.”
Adele says it was “hard to deal with” when doctors told her she would have to eat foods such as pies again after her cancer diagnosis because she “didn’t want to get back to the old me”. She added: “Food has a big effect on the way that you feel mentally as well, if you put junk in, you get junk out.
“So I like to eat natural food now. I don’t like much processed food.”
The star, who dropped from 13st to around seven-and-a-half stone, admits she “doesn’t care” how much she weighs, instead wanting to focus on how she feels. She paid tribute to her girlfriend Kate Holderness for encouraging her to focus on selfcare as she attempted to slim down.
She added: “She never gave up on me, she could see I was struggling, she knows me so well and she knew that I had to make a change. She always used to talk to me about self care, and I used to see that as selfish, but it’s not.”
Adele now wants to become the first person with a stoma bag to run the six major marathons - Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago, and New York City - while raising money for charity. “I’d like to be the first woman with an ileostomy to run the six major marathons, and the fastest too," she told Attitude Magazine.
