How former Coronation Street star Tupele Dorgu beat her sugar addiction

ACTRESS Tupele Dorgu freely admits that nothing was off limits when it came to feeding her craving for sugar.

 

Tupele would hardly ever drink water before she joined the program

 

“Among my friends and family, I was always known as the one who always wanted a biscuit.

On set I was always asking, ‘Have you got any chocolate?’” laughs the 38-year-old actress, best known for her role as the loud-mouthed machinist Kelly Crabtree in Coronation Street.

But in recent months Tupele, who lives in Manchester with her businessman husband Mark, 46, began to feel her sweet tooth was starting to get out of hand.

“I’d put on a little bit of weight and was finding hard to lose. I just kept putting more on,” she says.

“I was never the type to eat three square meals a day. I substituted lunch with a cake and a coffee.

“I never said, ‘I shouldn’t have that’. I always incorporated sugar wherever I could and it was the thing I looked forward to. I’d always have dessert and I always took cake round to friends’ houses. I hadn’t really addressed what I now know was an addiction.”

Tupele’s dietary habits are by no means unusual. A report by the government agency Public Health England (PHE) published in October announced that as a nation “we are eating too much sugar and it is bad for our health”.

Studies show that having a high-sugar diet (and consequently becoming obese) is linked to Type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

It is also thought that one in 20 cancers are linked to being overweight. In the UK nearly two-thirds of men and more than half of women are either overweight or obese.

PHE says obesity is “the public health crisis of our time” costing the NHS £5billion a year.

 

Tupele Dorgu is joined by a host of big names and big appetites on the show

 

It is advocating a sugar tax that it says could work alongside other controls, including a ban on advertising unhealthy foods during family TV shows.

Government guidelines state the average adult should consume no more than 30g (the equivalent of around six teaspoonfuls) of added sugar per day while children between and the ages of seven and 10 should be eating no more than 24g of added sugar and no more than 19g for four to six-year-olds.

Added sugars refers the stuff that has been added to food and drink to sweeten it rather than those occurring naturally in fruit and veg or plain yogurts.

To put this into perspective, a typical 330ml can of fizzy pop contains around 35g of sugar.

By last summer, Tupele, who is 5ft 9in, weighed 10st 11b, which she says was the biggest she had ever been.

“Things were starting to get out of hand,” she admits. So when she was asked if she would consider taking part in a new reality show for ITV called Sugar Free Farm, she decided to give it a go.

The premise for the three-part series, which was filmed in September last year, was to find out how the six famous faces who took part would cope when they had to live without added sugar in their food for two weeks.

 

The sugar free farmers weren't allowed to snack while they were on the set

 

During the dietary experiment, Tupele and her fellow celebs – musical theatre star Jane McDonald, comedian Rory McGrath, The Chase quiz master Mark Labbett, TOWIE’s James “Arg” Argent and dancer and West End star Jennifer Ellison – would live and work on a country farm in Laverstoke Park Farm in Hampshire, in return for their share of healthy, wholesome food.

Although Tupele was keen to change her habits and shake off her sugar addiction, she admits she was nervous about the prospect of having no control over what she was eating.

“I didn’t want to be hungry or given food I didn’t want to eat,” she explains.

“There’s nothing worse than being really hungry and then someone gives you something you don’t like.

“All the meals were designed for us each day, I knew there wouldn’t be a choice. You couldn’t just go to the fridge and have what you wanted.”

On the farm, the six celebrities were split into pairs and given tasks that were swapped over every two or three days.

They were either given farm jobs including milking, feeding the animals, gathering eggs, clearing out barns or cultivating the garden, or they would be set to work in the farm kitchen and given recipes for the next day using the farm’s fresh, organic sugar-free ingredients.

As the time went on it got easier and I was jumping out of bed

Tupele Dorgu

 

“The routine was tough at first but I found I began to get up naturally at around 7am – as the time went on it got easier and I was jumping out of bed,” says Tupele.

“The farm had everything we needed. They made everything including cheese and cured meats. There were loads of different greens, too, such as chard, kale and spinach. From the beetroot and berries to the nuts and seeds, everything was organic, hand-reared and tasted amazing.”

 

Tupele has managed to lose more than a stone since they finished filming the show

 

Although she took to cleaning the hen coop like a natural, one of Tupele’s first real challenges was giving up the sugar-laden drinks she loved.

“I don’t like water,” she says. “I’ve never been someone who can drink it by the gallon, even if I’m running. I always drank juice, which is loaded with sugar, When they told me I couldn’t have it on the farm, I panicked. I thought that I was going to die of dehydration but I got around it by putting a squeeze of lime or lemon in the water instead.”

In the first couple of days she suffered sugar withdrawal headaches which made her feel tired although she says the feeling soon passed.

However some of her fellow celebrity contestants struggled with the regime. Former Brookside actress Jennifer Ellison, who before the show had been drinking up to eight cans of cola a day, suffered such debilitating withdrawal symptoms that medics had to be called in to treat her.

 

But Tupele says: “I think it was Mark who actually found it the toughest as he eats a lot. He’s a big guy so he’s used to having big meals. There were occasions where he cheated a little bit."

“Arg and Mark probably struggled the most – they found it more challenging as it’s very different to what they did normally.

“But everyone began to embrace things. They celebrated with me when I finished my first glass of water.”

On leaving the farm, Tupele was determined to keep reaping the benefits of her new diet and has since lost over a stone.

“I haven’t had any cake since we wrapped filming in September,” she says. “I can have a cappuccino without sugar now – I never thought I’d get to that stage. And if I do have a drink, I choose a vodka soda which has no sugar in it.”

Husband Mark, she says, could not be happier with his wife’s new diet.

“He was worried about me before I went in because of all the sugar but now I cook sugar-free stuff which we both enjoy,” she says.

“We fill up on vegetables, a nice piece of meat and sweet potato fries. I’d feel bad now if I ate a whole piece of cheesecake.”

Determined to stay on track, Tupele has even launched her own blog sugarfreebabeblog.wordpress.com containing guilt-free recipes.

“I found that it’s possible to cut out sugar even after being addicted to it and thinking it was the best thing in the world,” she says.

“It really has changed my life.”

? Sugar Free Farm starts tonight, 8pm, on ITV.