I dropped 5 sizes & was accused of fat jabs – the reality was far more sinister & I got it from my son, says Enders star
Ex-EastEnders star Melissa Suffield also revealed in an exclusive chat with The Sun the staggering amount she spent trying to discover what was causing her drastic weight loss
SITTING at her family’s Christmas table, surrounded by her loved ones tucking into a festive feast with plates piled high, Melissa Suffield was filled with dread.
The actress, who shot to fame as Lucy Beale in EastEnders back in 2004, has spent the last few years struggling to eat most days, let alone at Christmas. After dropping FIVE dress sizes and losing over three stone, she was accused of using fat jabs to shed weight. But here, she tells us the much more sinister reason – and has a stark warning for other mums.
The actress, 33, became a positive body image advocate after the birth of her son River in March 2020, but everything changed almost overnight when she fell ill in December 2023 and her weight dramatically plumeted. She went from a size 16 to a 6/8 very quickly.
Melissa, who is “staunchly against” fat jabs, was furious when trolls thought she had used drugs like Ozempic when she shed weight quickly.
She says: “What was extra annoying is that I am so staunchly against them. And not because, you know, it’s the easy way out. For me, it comes from a health perspective.”
But the real reason for her drastic weight loss was something very different.
Melissa was diagnosed with small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) after experiencing “horrible nausea” and developing an illness which doctors think came as the result of a stomach bug her son picked up.
She says: “All we know is that there was a pathogenic bacteria, Enterobacter, got in my system. Could be from food, could be from touching a surface then touching my mouth.”
FINANCIAL BLOW
Having spent over two years with symptoms including loss of appetite, abdominal pain, nausea, bloating, vomiting, and unintentional weight loss, and having no luck with the NHS, Melissa resorted to spending £20,000 on private health care, tests and medication.
It was then she was diagnosed with incurable SIBO.
Referring to fat jabs, she says: “Honestly, the idea of doing anything to upset [the gut] balance willingly… the mind boggles.”
Melissa’s unintentional weight loss came to a head last summer when she caught sight of herself in the mirror and noticed her protruding ribcage.
She tells us: “I had an absolute breakdown. I was in a dressing room, trying on clothes. I had just an absolute, complete breakdown when I realised that I could just really see my ribs.
“Obviously, the lighting in the dressing room is particularly harsh. But I was like, I’ve never been able to see my ribs before.
“I could really visually see how much weight I had lost, but that was also just really symbolic of everything else that I’d lost as well.
“Hopefully I can get back to a place where I’m not malnourished, which is why I’d lost weight before, because I was severely malnourished.”
She now sits at around a size 10 if she “really works at keeping it up”.
Because of SIBO, Melissa was vomiting and experiencing diarrhoea which meant she “wasn’t taking in enough nutrients or calories”.
She says: “I had constant nausea because of the initial infection which meant all food was making me sick, as well as reacting to lots of foods and then not being able to eat them.
“The initial infection was the trigger event, but it’s caused a fair amount of collapse in other areas, like my migrating motor complex, my microbiome diversity, and my processing of histamine,” she explains.
She adds that she is now “taking in enough calories” which is why she has gained some weight back.
CHRISTMAS WAS RUINED
More than two years on from her first SIBO symptoms, Melissa is still dealing with the fallout, and she spent yet another Christmas without festive food.
The devastated star told us: “I had half a Christmas dinner.”
She even had to take cooking equipment with her when she stayed with family, explaining how she took her own air fryer to her mum’s house.
“She was like, ‘You can just use ours’. I was like, ‘Absolutely not, cross-contamination!,” she says
“I’m not even taking the risk while I’m a) away from home, and b) you don’t want to flare up on Christmas Day.”
Instead, she cooked her own parsnips, carrots, and potatoes at her mum’s house on the day, and cooked her own chicken at her sister’s house that morning before going over there.
She could only manage a small portion of green vegetables, because they are potentially a problem for her.
She says: “I had maybe three green beans, rather than maybe, say, the six or seven I’d have at home.”
Melissa explained how she was adamant she did not want to take any chances.
If she’s not careful with food she risks a whole host of different gastrointestinal issues such as feeling nauseous, vomiting, pain and diarrhoea.
Looking ahead to 2026, Melissa hopes she will finally get to enjoy a Christmas dinner with all of the trimmings and a splash of gravy.
There is no easy cure for SIBO, but if Melissa continues managing what she eats and introducing new foods when she can, she will hopefully achieve her goal.
