I’m As skinny as Trinny!
When she saw this photo of herself in YOU SUSANNAH CONSTANTINE was horrified... ...6 months on, after a hellishly brutal fitness regime, she now weighs LESS than her old TV pal
IHAVE reached a defining moment in my life. Today I can announce that, for the first time ever, I weigh less than my dear friend and former TV ‘sister’ Trinny. In just three months I’ve lost a stone and a half of flab – a caterpillar-style transformation from a lardy, puffed-up size 16 to a curvy size 10/12.
Even my children have stopped passing judgment on my girth, which is quite a relief – unlike the extraordinary regime required to reach this happy state.
The truth is that keeping up with Trinny has meant drastic and sometimes terrifying measures, which is why in recent weeks I’ve been scrummaging down with the women from the mighty Saracens Women rugby team and rowing myself to lung-bursting exhaustion on the Thames with rowing champion James Cracknell.
Trinny is a skinny size 8, it’s true, but her extra inches of height mean I’m definitely the lighter of the two.
I’ve risked hypothermia during a triathalon in sub-zero conditions, driven on by a personal trainer I know affectionately as ‘utter sadist b ****** ’.
And to top it all, I’ve had to swim through gallons of mud for the toughest and most barking mad endurance race in the country – all televised in humiliating detail in the name of Sport Relief.
My very peculiar version of shock therapy started last year when I opened The Mail on Sunday’s You magazine and did a double take. Because there in front of me was a photographic portrait of someone large who turned out to be me. It was not at all flattering. Floaty frock or no floaty frock, I resembled a tug boat, a point pretty much confirmed by Trinny when we spoke. To be blunt, I was a fat hippo.
This unpleasant vision was all the more disconcerting as I’ve never had hang-ups about food or struggled with my weight. Quite the opposite, in fact. I ate a heroic amount for most of my life, yet never put on a pound until I hit my 40s. That’s when it started to stick. Like countless others, I thought I was immune from middle-aged spread, until I wasn’t.
My 14-year-old daughter, Cece, was direct and to the point. I stepped into the bath one morning only to hear her remark through the door that I’d better let some water out first. When she watched a video of me plunging into an ice hole after a hot sauna on a trip to Scandinavia she casually remarked, ‘There goes the ice cap’.
In my own deluded opinion, of course, I was a ‘comfortable’ shape. I told friends and family, or anyone who’d listen, that I was happy in my skin, that I was determined to defy convention. It was easier to laugh and say ‘I don’t care’, except that I did care. Very much.
In my heart, I knew I was letting myself go and, worse, that I was 90 per cent of the way to the point of no return.
I’d spent years on television telling frumpy women what to wear to make the best of themselves. Like so many others in my situation, it was easier to stay in a rut than find the energy to do something about it – exactly what I’d heard from all those ladies Trinny and I had helped on our TV show What Not To Wear. Now, I was letting all of them down. Then came a phone call which offered me a way out. Did I want to take part in a fitness challenge for Sport Relief? You bet I did. With professional advisers – not to mention the fearsome incentive of a huge television audience – there was at least a chance of battling the bulge.
This is why, last November, I found myself alongside Les Dennis, EastEnders actress Tameka Empson and Radio 4 News Quiz presenter Miles Jupp, ready to embark upon 10 weeks with the sporting elite.
Our blood was tested, our hearts monitored. Les was told he had type 2 diabetes (by the end of our challenge it had disappeared).
My body fat percentage was 32.7, which tipped me into the obese range, and it turned out there was too much fat caking my internal organs, also. I can’t say the grim reaper was hovering, exactly, but our adviser, Professor Greg Whyte, a former Olympic pentathlete, was clear: if I carried on as I was I’d be a very unhealthy old woman. There were some specific yet very simple ground rules for the weeks ahead. There would be no sugar, no booze and no processed food. We’d eat carbohydrates only once a day.
We would be training five or six days a week and were expected to do 10,000 steps a day. The first ordeal for ‘Suet Sue’, as I now described myself, was aerial yoga. Imagine ‘downward dog’ while suspended mid-air by a ribbon.
I was disturbed to find everything in darkness when I hung upside down for the first time, until I realised that my boobs and stomach had flapped down over my eyes. Then came the rugby, and a pathetic attempt to keep up with Saracens Women’s team on a freezing winter’s night. I wheezed and fell over, they rolled their eyes.
There were endless hour-long sessions with that sadistic personal trainer and after one particularly cruel bout of HIIT, or high-intensity training, I was physically sick.
He made me do endless sprints up and down the lawn before throwing a bucket of icy water over me – practice, apparently, for that crackers endurance race, more of which in a moment.
It’s easy to say you don’t have time to exercise, but I soon learnt that you can fit little bits of activity around everything else.
I started to walk and run everywhere, leaving the car at home on shorter journeys. Relentless exercise combined with kicking sugar from my diet was a lethal combination for the adipose tissue – or fat, which melted away. I knew it was really working after yet another wry comment from Cece.
‘Mum you look great from behind,’
I spent years on TV telling frumpy women what to wear My body fat percentage was 32.7 – the obese range
she said one morning. ‘The back flubber that used to hang over your pants has gone.’
If fighting my way back into shape was a welcome objective, the demented Tough Guy obstacle course, the oldest and hardest of the endurance races open to the general public, was more troubling.
To be honest, I’d never heard of it before, so when the BBC showed the four of us a video nasty of just what was involved we became mildly hysterical.
Lines of bare-chested men stood on muddy plains banging drums like a scene from Braveheart. Coloured smoke rose in plumes above their heads. We watched as these crazy people swam in freezing cold water after breaking the ice on the top. They jumped over burning hay bales and climbed up 50ft nearvertical slopes. As I would later discover, they were even being electrocuted at various points in the proceedings.
The organisers calmly explained that there had been only one death in the history of Tough Guy so far: that of a 44-year-old man who suffered a heart attack brought on by extreme hypothermia. I was far from comforted.
Another competittor was electrocuted, fell into water and had to be resuscitated, but survived. There has been a broken neck, pelvis and pubic bone, and hundreds have suffered from hypothermia. No wonder it seemed a life-ordeath situation when, early last month, we stood on the Tough Guy start line in Wolverhampton. Thousands were taking part, most of them men from Norway and Holland in their prime, many bare-chested. I wore a half wetsuit but refused the neoprene hat.
When the starting cannon – yes, cannon – fired, I just ran and somehow kept going. Fortunately, the BBC had banned us from entering The Torture Chambers – pitchblack tunnels with electric wires and hardwood spikes hanging from every angle – judging them too dangerous for national TV. But there was no shortage of agony, including the ‘Behemoth’: a terrifying rope bridge over a 70ft drop.
My husband Sten was there to ‘cheer’ me on, and when I edged my way into that absolutely freezing lake he shouted, ‘C’mon Susannah. This is a hippo’s natural habitat.’ I made an appropriate gesture. I’ve eaten kangaroo balls in the I’m A Celebrity jungle. I’ve helped pick up the poo from 80 mushing dogs during my 300-mile trek across the Arctic.
But this challenge has been among the hardest things I’ve ever done. It’s been worth it, if only for Sport Relief which, since it started in 2002, has raised more than £335 million for charity. This year the focus is on maternal and mental health and malaria. I’ve benefited, too, of course. In fact, it’s changed my life. For a start, I’ve learned that losing weight is not rocket science.
Then there’s the friendship – it really helps if you’re getting fit with other people.
So far, I’ve kept away from the chocolate stash, although I do allow myself a small packet of Twiglets a day and have a spoonful of honey in my tea. And who can argue with the facts? Suddenly, it’s a joy to step on the scales: I weighed 11st 12lb when I started all this, now I’m a healthy 10st 6lb.
Aside from the bikini bonus, I’m thrilled I can now fit into my favourite gorgeous, black Alessandra Rich dress.
And I plan to sell that wretched wardrobe of big clothes, including that floaty fright I wore for YOU Magazine. Trinny will wholeheartedly approve.
Now I can sell that wretched wardobe of big clothes
Famously Unfit... For Sport Relief will be broadcast on Sunday March 18 on BBC2. The start time has yet to be confirmed.