07 October 2023 , 16:20
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Strictly's Angela Rippon was left "devastated" by fat comments.
The TV journalist, 78, underwent a full body MRI for her BBC series How to Stay Young back in 2016. She was given a detailed look inside her body as part of the programme, but the journalist was left shocked when she was told she had high levels of visceral fat surrounding her liver and heart. Angela was anxious about undergoing the examination, but was told she had a “very young heart,” with the “body composition of a young person.”
However, Professor Jimmy Bell said: “If we have a look around the liver, all the white bits are what we call visceral fat. You have a very significant amount of visceral fat. We are going to zoom into the heart and the yellow bits around it. Again, surprisingly you have a large amount of fat accumulated around your heart. That physical constraint of your heart pumping against that fat, might be a problem in the long-term.”
Angela had the MRI scan on her BBC show How to Stay Young (BBC)In response, Angela said: “I’m in shock. This is all a bit difficult to take in!” She was told she had six to seven litres of visceral fat, when the average individual is meant to have less than two. “That is not good news,” Angela admitted. “I eat well, I exercise, so where the heck has all of this internal fat come from?”
According to Diabetes.co.uk, carrying a high amount of visceral fat is known to be associated with insulin resistance, which can lead to glucose intolerance and type 2 diabetes as well as heart disease, Alzhimer's and breast cancer. To reduce levels of visceral fat, they recommend regular exercises, healthy and balance diet, regular sleep, no smoking and limiting alcohol.
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“This is devastating,” Angela confessed on the show. “I had no idea that as we age some of us put on lots of internal body fat. Women do seem to be more vulnerable than men, but whatever the cause the implications for me are serious.” In a desperate bid to reduce her high visceral fat levels, the Strictly Come Dancing contestant tried to make changes to her diet, which mainly involved adding high-resistant starch foods such as pulses like lentils and chickpeas.
Angela found foods that are high-resistant starch, it passes through to the large intestine where it releases an acid which enters the body to reduce internal fat. Professor Bell explained that higher levels of visceral fat typically come from poor lifestyle choices. However, for an active individual like Angela, her high levels of visceral fat may have been down to the ageing process.
The former newsreader, who turns 79 this month, has already stunned viewers with her dance skills on Strictly. In the first live show, she wowed the judges and viewers with one very bendy move during her Cha Cha Cha with Kai Widdrington as she showed off her very flexible high kick. Yet before her performance blew everyone away, Angela was hit with imposter syndrome, as she felt like her body couldn't keep up with her. When she found out she was partnered with Kai, 28, she said: "I know what I should be doing, I know how it should be feeling, it's actually making my legs do it to the music. I'm just getting cross and frustrated."
She admitted at the start of the week that the training was taking its toll. She said: "I'm exhausted. There are bits of me aching that I didn't know I had." Before the show started, Angela said: "When my agent rang me and said 'Angela, they want you to do Strictly' the first thing out of my mouth was 'why didn't they ask me ten years ago?' I shall be 79 years old in October and it's bonkers really that I'm doing this. I took a long time to decide if I wanted to do it... my brain says fun...my body says 'What the hell do you think you're doing?' When it was announced I was doing it I had so many people online saying 'Cheers for 70-year-old dancers!'"