Since she skyrocketed to fame on Big Brother, Josie Gibson has become a nationally-loved and immediately recognisable face on British television, participating in I'm A Celebrity and presenting This Morning since 2021. She has also been incredibly candid about the struggles she has faced with mental health and confidence, and now she has opened up about her weight loss journey.
Taking to Instagram on 10 January, she shared a video of herself exercising, with a lengthy caption in which she opened up about her lipedema diagnosis, explaining what it means and how she has tried to overcome it.
Josie wrote: " Hope this inspires someone out there…not that I think I’m an inspiration…I'm just one of those who is constantly fighting my genetics. I was diagnosed with lipodema [sic] last year which I always knew anyway. So the fight is real as my body retains fat unlike a normal body should. I have not shared because I thought it looked pretty obvious anyway."
On how she has been losing weight, she penned: "I have been working out more [...] Gyms can be intimidating sometimes but we are all there for the same reason and I love getting stuck into my own little circuits.
How Josie Gibson lost the weight
In her brand new Channel 5 lifestyle documentary, The 1970s Diet: Could It Work for You?, Josie explored the food trends of the 1970s, testing whether following a meal plan inspired by the era, with smaller portions and food such as boiled potatoes, pork, liver, spam, beans and Angel Delight, could help to reduce modern-day obesity.
HELLO! spoke exclusively to Monty Simmons, a London-based personal trainer with more than 12 years of experience in fitness, who gave us his take on the 1970s diet. He said: "I really respect what Josie’s done. It’s admirable that she’s done it without weight-loss jabs. You need to find what works for you, and this clearly did the job. Losing five stone is no easy feat, it requires a huge amount of dedication."
© Shutterstock"A '1970s diet' is interesting," he continued. "At its core, it’s smaller portions and simpler foods like boiled potatoes, liver, pork, beans, and less sugar. That’s a positive message, because most of us would benefit from eating less processed food." Though he doesn't personally believe in the specificity of labelling diets, he acknowledges their use and adds that they make the method "easy to understand and accessible".
Instead, he is a believer in a whole-foods approach more widely, as well as reducing overall sugar intake. As for Josie's other methods, such as intermittent fasting and simple gym routines, he believes that the key is finding a "realistic, consistent and sustainable" approach", that's more about settling on something you can stick to rather than "following a 'perfect plan'."
