Alison Hammond has unveiled a markedly slimmer appearance in new photographs taken during filming for The Great British Bake Off, with the television presenter’s team posting images that drew a flood of praise and renewed attention to a weight-loss programme she says has helped her drop around 11 stone and reverse a pre-diabetic diagnosis. The pictures, shared on Thursday by her long-time make-up artist Mikey Phillips, show the 50-year-old host in a white T-shirt, colourful A-line skirt and denim jacket on the show’s Berkshire set. In a report on the posts, the Evening Standard noted that fans and fellow television personalities quickly commented on the transformation and said Hammond had “managed to get down to 16 and a half stone” after overhauling her fitness and diet. The Standard added that she has previously said she was “too ‘frightened’” to try weight-loss injections after hearing “scare stories.”
Hammond, who rose to prominence on Big Brother in 2002 and has since become a mainstay of ITV’s This Morning and co-host of Bake Off, has spoken repeatedly over the past year about the health scare that pushed her to change course. In a September 2024 interview cited by Hello!, she told viewers: “I was in a situation where I was morbidly obese. I had to lose weight otherwise I was dying… I was dying. I mean I’m still big now, people can still see I’m big but now I’m 17 stone rather than being 28 stone.” The remarks, delivered during a discussion on This Morning, were among her clearest public descriptions of the medical and personal stakes involved.
In December 2024 she elaborated that a doctor’s warning she was pre-diabetic and a plea from her late mother to “sort out your weight” helped focus her efforts. In an interview highlighted by Heart, Hammond said her mother had told her, “If you can, sort out your weight, Alison,” a message that “really set it in my head.” In the same exchange, Hammond said she had chosen not to use GLP-1 weight-loss medications after hearing negative accounts of side effects, adding: “As soon as I hear any scare story, I get frightened. 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.” She said instead that she cut back on sweets and fatty foods, worked with a trainer and took up home workouts including weights, walking and stretching; she credited those changes with reversing the pre-diabetic diagnosis.
The latest images were framed as a simple “glam” share from a filming day and did not include a new tally of pounds lost, but they prompted fresh discussion of a process that Hammond has described as incremental and pragmatic rather than ascetic. In a profile with Heat, she set out a typical week: “I’ve got a personal trainer – she’s amazing. She trains me when I can train. If I’m working, I don’t train, I’ll go for a walk. But when I’m at home, I’ll go and have a session with her in the morning, just an hour. It might be four days a week.” On diet, she said, “I don’t deny myself anything. I eat everything, but in moderation.” The interview also underscored what colleagues often describe as her high-energy routine across several shows, which she credited with reinforcing the discipline of daily movement when gym sessions are not possible.
Hammond has spoken candidly about earlier attempts to manage her weight, including surgery that she later reversed. She had a gastric band fitted in 2007 after what she called a “mortifying” on-camera incident during an interview with actor Matt Damon, but ultimately had the band removed after complications. “I felt as if my body was rejecting the foreign entity inside me and I began to get ill,” she later recalled of the decision to take it out, saying scar tissue had formed around the device. Reports at the time noted that she described the removal procedure as taking far longer than usual because of the complications. The experience formed part of a broader public discussion in which she has said obesity is not a simple matter of willpower and that what works for one person may be unsafe or ineffective for another.
The visual refresh circulating this week was traced to Phillips’s Instagram account, with the Evening Standard reporting that fellow celebrities, including Vicky Pattison, left approving remarks. The images align with a wardrobe strategy Hammond and her stylists have adopted on Bake Off: bolder colour blocks, defined tailoring and relaxed staples such as denim layers that can be removed during long filming days. Fashion outlets that track the show’s styling have recently highlighted a colourful striped skirt paired with a light-wash jacket as characteristic of Hammond’s current on-screen look, a direction that has evolved alongside her fitness programme.
Hammond has linked the changes to specific health outcomes as well as a general sense of control. In December she said that cutting back on sugar and fatty foods, introducing regular strength and mobility work and joining guided sessions with a trainer had helped push her weight down from around 28 stone to the mid-teens; she said her clinicians had since removed the pre-diabetic label. She contrasted that approach with reliance on injections, reiterating that while she would not judge others, she had been “frightened” off by stories she had heard. Her comments echo a broader public debate in the UK as the use of GLP-1 drugs has risen, with some public figures embracing the medications and others warning of side effects or supply pressure on patients with type 2 diabetes.
The presenter’s career has expanded in parallel with the lifestyle changes. After entering the public eye as a Big Brother contestant in 2002, Hammond joined This Morning, where she is now one of the programme’s rotating main presenters. In 2023 she was named co-host of The Great British Bake Off alongside Noel Fielding, and in 2024 she took over For the Love of Dogs following the death of Paul O’Grady. She has fronted specials and awards-show coverage and in recent months has promoted new factual-entertainment projects. A Birmingham native, she turned 50 in February and has a son, Aiden, born in 2005.
Thursday’s photographs also revived social-media commentary about the day-to-day adjustments Hammond has made while working on a baking programme that is notorious among its participants for weight gain during a ten-week shoot. Last autumn she said she instituted a “tastes only” rule for herself in the tent to avoid putting the weight back on after dropping multiple stone, adding that she had asked co-host Fielding to help keep her honest around the tasting table. The remarks came as she described feeling “much more comfortable” returning for a second series of the Channel 4 show and settling into the rhythms of hosting.
Her public framing of the programme has stressed sustainability and self-acceptance rather than a one-time target. “I feel amazing. I feel happy within myself,” she told Heat this spring, when she also repeated that she aims for four training sessions a week when work allows and substitutes walking when it does not. In the same interview she emphasised that she does not preach a template: “It’s always different for every single person… If anyone is struggling, go and speak to a doctor or someone who knows about diet. I’m the last person to get advice from, because I’ve struggled all my life. And I still struggle.”
The Evening Standard, in summarising her earlier comments to lifestyle magazines, reported that Hammond starts some mornings with a ginger shot and prefers substantial breakfasts, often eating with her son before work. It also noted that she has described typical lunches and dinners that reflect both Caribbean and British influences, consistent with her account of moderation rather than strict exclusion. The paper additionally recapped her disclosure that she had attempted surgical interventions in the past and that her mother, Maria, urged her to address her health – a plea that became more resonant after her mother’s death in 2020.
Colleagues on Bake Off and This Morning have publicly supported the shift in tone and routine. Fielding has joked that he tries to steer her away from the most tempting plates between takes, while judges Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith have said on separate occasions that crew members commonly put on weight during the series. Hammond has said she gained “a stone” during one season and then took a year to shed it. In the context of her longer-term goal of keeping her health markers inside safe parameters, those choices sit alongside the foundational changes in diet and exercise that she credits for the larger drop.
The response to the makeover images tracked earlier bouts of attention when she posted gym selfies and behind-the-scenes clips during training days. In January she earned prominent messages of support after sharing a makeup-free shot taken after a workout, writing that she would “always be enough” and drawing endorsements from television peers who said her emphasis on self-acceptance resonated with viewers. Those posts were widely read as signalling that the weight-loss effort was not about chasing a single number, but about recovering stamina, mobility and a level of long-term medical safety that her doctors had told her she risked losing without intervention.
Hammond’s work commitments appear unaffected by the latest burst of attention. Bake Off returned in early September with Hammond and Fielding back in the tent and Leith and Hollywood judging; the programme is filmed at Welford Park, where the Thursday images were shot, and will run through the autumn. ITV has continued to position Hammond as one of the pillars of This Morning’s presenting lineup, and she remains the front-face of For the Love of Dogs, filmed at Battersea. Alongside those roles, lifestyle outlets have tracked her move toward brighter, more structured silhouettes, noting that the on-screen styling shift roughly mirrors the off-screen fitness arc now in its second year.
As with many high-profile weight-loss narratives, the scrutiny has occasionally veered toward speculation, particularly about medications. Hammond’s own statements, however, have been consistent: she rejected using injections when she began losing weight because she was “frightened” by “scare stories,” stressed she does not judge those who choose them, and credits her outcome to a personal trainer, walking and home strength work, and moderating food rather than forbidding it. For now, the image her team posted—a confident smile beneath fresh make-up, a bright skirt and a light denim jacket—serves chiefly as a public marker of a programme she says is still ongoing, anchored in habits she has said are designed to be kept up while moving between studios, sets and home.
The focus on health has coincided with a period of professional consolidation after two decades of steady advancement. A Birmingham-born former drama-workshop student who could not afford formal drama school, Hammond parlayed a reality-television appearance into a reporting slot and then presenting roles that made her a familiar face to daytime audiences. Wikipedia’s entry on her career lists credits that range from Strictly Come Dancing to Celebrity MasterChef and notes that she co-hosted the BAFTA film awards before moving into Bake Off. Those fixtures, combined with a catalogue of public statements about her health and grief in the years surrounding her mother’s death, form the context in which Thursday’s makeover images landed: not so much a surprise as a continuation of themes Hammond has been articulating—visibility, control and moderation—while moving across some of the most watched stages in British television.
