This Morning viewers sent messages of support to Alison Hammond in their droves on Friday morning, after the presenter broke down in tears during a discussion about obesity.
After speaking to a caller about the subject, Alison became tearful as she spoke to co-host Dermot O’Leary and agony aunt Deidre Sanders about her own experiences and the stigma that still surrounds the condition.
“Can I just say something? Because obviously I’ve had…” she began, pointing out she was already “getting upset”. “I’ve had obesity all my life. And what it is, your regulation system is out of whack. So you can’t control wanting to eat all the time, and stuff like that.
“And a lot of people don’t realise, obesity is a disease. You can’t help wanting to eat all the time.”
Becoming tearful, she continued: “Sorry – I just think people look down on [other] people because they’re so big, and they can’t actually help it. When you’ve actually got a disease, which is obesity, and your regulation system is out of whack, you can’t actually help it.”
“Sorry, it really touches me,” she added, before calling on the NHS to take obesity more seriously and offer those affected by it more support.
“The NHS needs to see it as a more serious disease,” the emotional star insisted. “People help people who are anorexic, but they don’t help people who are overweight. And that’s why so many people turn to surgery and things like that, because they don’t know what to do. Sorry, it’s really affected me.”
“It’s so hard,” she concluded. “People don’t realise. I’m so sorry.”
Shortly after Alison’s tearful moment aired, This Morning hailed her for being vulnerable on air.
“Your vulnerability is inspiring, and you are an incredible role model,” they said.
Alison was also flooded with positive messages from fans, who showed her their support on social media.
Last year, Alison shared that she underwent a gastric band operation in 2007, after a “horrible, shameful” incident during an interview with Matt Damon.
However, following the surgery, the former Big Brother star began experiencing complications and “couldn’t keep anything down”, eventually deciding to have the procedure reversed after two years.
“It was really distressing,” she recalled in her autobiography. “I felt as if my body was rejecting the foreign entity inside me and I began to get ill.
“Normally it takes 15 minutes to remove a gastric band, but it took my surgeon an hour and a half because scar tissue had grown around mine so thickly that it was squeezing my stomach shut to the point where I couldn’t eat anything,” Alison added. “Which was why I was always being sick.”
On her self-image now, Alison wrote: “I may be up and down with my feelings when it comes to weight, but I mean it when I say that I love being big.
“I love myself and I love my largeness; I don’t look in the mirror and think, ‘Oh, no, I’m so fat’. I look in the mirror and think, ‘I’m beautiful, man. I look so good. I look fire’.”
This Morning airs every weekday from 10am on ITV.
Help and support:
- Beat, Adult Helpline: 0808 801 0677 and Youthline: 0808 801 0711 or email help@beateatingdisorders.org.uk (adults) fyp@beateatingdisorders.org.uk (youth support)
Samaritans, open 24 hours a day, on 116 123
Mind, open Monday to Friday, 9am-6pm on 0300 123 3393