Bake Off is back and judge Prue Leith has revealed the strict regimen she keeps to during the baking show and says weight loss jabs ‘take the joy out of life’
Prue Leith says she loses weight during Bake Off and revealed her secret recipe for shedding the pounds is to stick to a strict diet of only cake and wine.
The 83 year-old judge took over for Mary Berry as a judge on the baking show in 2017. Two years later, she put on a stone whilst filming the series and has since decided that, during filming, she will only eat cake and wine so that it doesn’t happen again.
She explained on a podcast in 2023 that all she eats is cake during the series because there is so much in one helping: “In a cake, you get the filling, the icing and the sponge in one teaspoon. I don’t eat anything else.
“I don’t eat lunch and I don’t eat breakfast.”
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Prue continued to say that she struggles to stick to one teaspoon as she is hungry when she arrives for work, but fellow judge Paul Hollywood is more disciplined.
“If you watch Paul, he never has more than one mouthful. I normally end up with two.”
But, so far, Prue has stuck to her guns about skipping breakfast and lunch. She admitted to The Telegraph earlier this year that she is “furious” with her husband John when he tries to tempt her with breakfast foods. “My husband John is naughty,” she said. “Because he’ll bring me tea and yogurt and I’ll be furious.”
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The only thing she refuses to give up is wine. “When it comes to the evening, what I can’t forgo is a couple of glasses of wine,” she said on the 2023 podcast.
“So my diet for several weeks is basically cake and alcohol. Probably not ideal but it is nice.”
Prue has often spoken about obesity in the UK and what she describes as “alarming” statistics about the weights of people in the country, especially concerning children. In 2024, the NHS found that 15% of children aged between two and 15 fit the obese classification.
As Ozempic boomed in the US and UK, Prue slammed weight loss jabs and said they “take the joy out of life”. She acknowledged that they might be necessary for some who desperately need to lose weight, but that most people would be better off learning how to cook healthy food.
“It’s the wrong answer because you have to go on jabbing yourself for the rest of your life and that can’t be entirely good,” she said at The Times Health Commission summit.
“You’re taking the joy out of life. It would be better if you could just get to love the food that is good for you.”
Prue added that it is “easy” to get children to love healthy food. “The only way we’ll stop children going for something that is easy and delicious is by getting them to love good food. It’s easy to do.”
The NHS advise a healthy diet and regular exercise for weight loss but do prescribe weight loss medication where necessary. They do not encourage people to skip meals in favour of less nutritionally beneficial foods like cake, nor do they encourage alcohol consumption in daily doses.
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