LOUNGING on the sofa, Tarnya Cuff believed she had found the answers to her prayers as the advertisement flickered on her TV screen.
Casting agents at Sky were looking for overweight families who needed help with their weight loss journey to appear on a new show.
It was 2008 and at 33 stone and counting after a broken leg had left her immobile, Tarnya couldn’t get in touch quick enough and to her delight, producers couldn’t wait to sign her up.
“Of course at that point we didn’t even know the name of the show,” Tarnya, now 55, explains.
“If I had known what it would turn into I would never have made that call.”
The show in question was Fat Families which has since become one of the most controversial weight loss programmes to ever air in the UK.
Host Steve Miller, a weight loss expert and self-proclaimed “lard police”, stunned viewers with his brutal takedowns of overweight families, who were brought on the show to get help with their diet.
This year, Steve is bringing Fat Families back 15 years after it last aired. He recently told The Sun how he’s determined to make the nation skinny without fat jabs.
Armed with a cameraman, he will soon be visiting the nation’s ‘fattest’ towns including Wigan, Hartlepool and Tamworth, dishing out servings of brutal honesty to show “lardies love” and help them shed weight and plans to air the show on YouTube.
News of the potential return has horrified Tarnya who has only recently felt comfortable discussing the show, 16 years after she first graced our screens.
She tells Fabulous: “I’m horrified that in this day and age a show like that can still be made.
‘TRAUMATISED & SUICIDAL’
“It left me traumatised and suicidal.
“Steve claims that he is doing this in people’s best interest but ultimately it is bullying and he is just doing it to stay relevant.
“A YouTube show is his only option and that really worries me because he won’t have a filter with a production company which is terrifying when you think about the young easily influenced children who will watch it.
“Fat Families is one of my biggest regrets and it shocks me that anyone would be willing to put their name to it particularly when so many people suffer with their mental health and body confidence.
“Although of course people who sign up now would at least know what they’re letting themselves in for, unlike myself.”
STEVE MILLER TO BRING BACK FAT FAMILIES
This year, Steve is bringing Fat Families back 15 years after it last aired.
Armed with a cameraman, he will soon be visiting the nation’s ‘fattest’ towns including Wigan, Hartlepool and Tamworth, dishing out servings of brutal honesty to show “lardies love” and help them shed weight.
Over the years, Steve has had issues with his own weight and it’s a battle he says is ongoing, admitting: “I can become a wide load at times”.
It’s this relatability, he feels, that makes him a hit with viewers.
The return of Fat Families is Steve’s way of shifting the narrative and backing up his harsh words with action.
“It’s a mixture of humour, because I think the nation wants the humour; woke television is dull, it’s boring,” he says.
“We want more Ricky Gervais-style out there. And that’s what I’m going to deliver. There won’t be any toning it down. I’m here to love everyone, love the lardies. I want people to laugh because we live in depressing times.”
In addition to the humour and experimental techniques, Steve will also introduce those taking part to the 80-20 meal planning system, which encourages people to eat nutritious food 80 per cent of the time and indulge in less healthy food the remaining 20 per cent of the time, while providing online tools to help address mental attitudes towards food and overeating.
“I guess what I don’t want it to become is just like Fat Families was before,” he says.
“Because then it will be boring. I want it to be strong, with some sensitivity. But really I want a f***ing lardy laugh out of me.
“And I tell you from a TV perspective. I can’t believe the amount of young people that are dying for this to happen. And I think it’s because they’ve been starved of proper comedy.”
Steve is funding the project himself and is planning to screen the episodes on YouTube. He wants it to be raw and ready without any studio sheen, and eventually harbours dreams of Netflix picking it up.
Each episode will take place in a location on the official list of UK’s ‘fattest’ towns and he will meet real people and tackle their weight issues head on.
Tarnya, who works in TV sales, admits that she had always been happy with her size but contacted the show after her leg injury in November 2008.
She says: “I was always aware of how big I was and I was never unhappy about it.
“I was part of communities that celebrated larger people and my husband Mike was always totally accepting of my size.
“However, after breaking my leg and dislocating my ankle, the damage in my tendons and ligaments left me with a limp and I was self-conscious that people assumed it was due to my weight.
“I also went from 30 to 33 stone in just three months which is an alarming amount of weight to gain in such a short time.
“I was unable to use crutches and my zimmerframe was too wide to move around my home so I was unable to keep mobile and was trapped in living room nine weeks
“I was desperate and the show seemed like a good way of getting help with my weight loss.”
After an initial call with producers, Tarnya, then 40, was referred to a psychologist who diagnosed her with a severe eating disorder before she and her husband Mike and mum Ann were given the OK to go on the show with her two sons Ben and Jake also appearing.
HARSH JABS
On Fat Families, Steve would observe the group before giving each member a weight loss goal, modifying the family home, giving them training and a nutrition regime in a bid to help them shed pounds.
Branding his participants “fatties”, “lardy” and “hefty”, Steve would repeatedly deliver harsh jabs in a bid to spur them on and shrink their “beach blubber bellies”.
After 10 weeks, the team would return to see how the family were getting on.
“My goal was to be under 30st which ultimately I achieved as I got down to 28st,” Tarnya says.
“But it wasn’t a sustainable approach, ultimately we were crash dieting.
“I remember Steve encouraging me to skip meals which is not a healthy way to lose weight.”
Steve became known for his catchphrases belittling his participants, calling himself a “belly buster” and mocking the participants for their lifestyle choices.
But Tarnya, who lives in Telford, says that much of what was seen on the show was inaccurate, claiming that the production team encouraged them to exaggerate how much they were eating.
She also claimed that the final edit that was aired was very different from what had been filmed.
Describing her own experience, she says: “I remember on one day of filming we took the kids out for a Chinese.
‘OUTRIGHT LIES’
“When we got home the producers asked what we would normally eat and when I said we wouldn’t have much for dinner because we’d already eaten our main meal they told us ‘we’d have to do something.’
“So they took us to Tesco and filmed us doing our weekly shop but encouraged us to add cream cakes and biscuits to our trolley.
“We were on a low income and we’d never have been able to afford the stuff they were asking us to put in the trolley – it was an outright lie.
“When I watched the show I realised they had also cut it so it looked like meals we’d eaten across multiple days had been scoffed in one.”
And while Steve was known for his catty comments on camera, Tarnya claims that she wasn’t aware of many of them until after the show aired.
She says: “Steve would say nasty things of course but he kept his worst comments behind our backs.
“He’d tell us he was going outside to film a voice over and then call us all the names under the sun – it was awful.”
For those who did watch Fat Families when it aired, there is one scene from Tarnya’s episode that they will likely remember.
Sitting on the sofa after their Chinese, Tarnya can be seen calling for her son Ben who proceeds to bring her snacks including a multi-pack of Disco crisps.
It is perhaps the show’s most famous scene having gone viral on social media in recent years and it is what Tarnya regrets most.
Holding back tears, she explains: “Ben was a 14-year-old boy in senior school and he could never escape that scene and he was relentlessly bullied over it.
“Never did I realise the ramifications it would have and I can never forgive myself for putting him in that position.
I’ve been 36 and a half stone and I’ve had body parts removed in order to be thin.
Tarnya
“Even today when people send me anything on TikTok, I will always watch it with the volume down in case it is that awful clip.
“What’s worse is that the clips that are circling TikTok have often been edited to make the situation look far worse.
“They make me look like I had my son waiting on me which simply wasn’t the case.
“I can’t take back what happened and I can’t forgive myself for what happened to him but not once did anyone check on either of my boys during the filming process.
“There was no aftercare.”
Following the show Tarnya faced further turmoil when viewers reported her to social services.
“People had accused me of abusing my kids and forcing them to do everything for me,” she says.
“I was forced to invite them into my home so they could see how happy my kids were but it was absolutely mortifying.”
Following the first show Tarnya lost three stone before taking part in a second series called Second Helpings which caught up with previous guests.
DARK DAYS
In total she lost five stone, dropping from 33st to 28st by the end of Second Helpings but unfortunately she was unable to keep the weight off.
“Everything hit me like a massive wave and my weight shot to 36 and a half stone in just three years,” Tarnya says.
“I was an absolute unit, I could barely move and that’s when my mental health really began to suffer.
“I was constantly battling intrusive thoughts about eating that I had learned from the show and I was put on antidepressants.
“It got to the point where I would be going to bed hoping that would be the night I didn’t wake up in the morning.
“I was constantly being told that my weight was limiting my life and I would die of a heart attack, I just wanted to get it over with.
“Those were the darkest years of my life.”
How to get help
EVERY 90 minutes in the UK a life is lost to suicide
It doesn’t discriminate, touching the lives of people in every corner of society – from the homeless and unemployed to builders and doctors, reality stars and footballers.
It’s the biggest killer of people under the age of 35, more deadly than cancer and car crashes.
And men are three times more likely to take their own life than women.
Yet it’s rarely spoken of, a taboo that threatens to continue its deadly rampage unless we all stop and take notice, now.
If you, or anyone you know, needs help dealing with mental health problems, the following organisations provide support:
Desperate to change her life for the better, Tarnya eventually agreed to have a gastric sleeve fitted on the NHS after losing four stone, and five years after appearing on the show she was down to 18st.
“It was the lifestyle change that I needed, my diet has vastly improved since then and I am so much more mobile,” she says.
“It was exactly the right sort of help, whereas being encouraged to crash diet was exactly the wrong kind.”
It has now been 16 years since Tarnya and her family appeared on the show and the mum-of-two has recently begun sharing her experience for the first time on TikTok in a bid to share her side of the story.
She says: “I couldn’t sleep the first night I posted a video about Fat Families, I really thought I was opening myself up to so much abuse.
“But most people were so kind and understanding, it was so freeing to be able to share my side of the story and take some of that power back.”
The 11 other families who have participated in Fat Families have been divided over their experience, with some claiming that it helped them have a healthier outlook on their diets and break negative habits, while others labelling it “a living nightmare and social suicide”.
I look in the mirror now and I am happy with my body because at the end of the day it is just a machine, it’s not what makes you ‘you’
Tarnya Cuff
Despite this, Steve Miller maintains he has no regrets over anything that’s come before on the show and defiantly told The Sun: “It’s not about being horrible to people who are fat; it’s about, ‘Come on, let’s have a gargantuan giggle, get yourself in order now, and let’s move forward’.”
And while Steve might be gunning for a new series of the controversial show, Tarnya hopes people will choose to accept themselves rather than signing up.
She says: “People are always going to chase the dream of being thin, whether that’s using jabs or flying to Turkey for surgery but it won’t make you any happier.
“Believe me, I’ve done it now. I’ve been 36 and a half stone and I’ve had body parts removed in order to be thin and my size has never had any correlation with my happiness.
“I look in the mirror now and I am happy with my body because at the end of the day it is just a machine, it’s not what makes you ‘you’.
“You have to understand it’s not what anybody outside that door thinks. You are not on TripAdvisor. You don’t need anyone’s reviews.
“If there are changes that you feel that you want to make and you can make, then so be it but do it for yourself not for anyone else.”
Responding to the claims made, Steve Miller told Fabulous: “The show did not take a crash diet approach so I’d refute this. In fact the family were given access to a top Nutritionist off camera who did example meal plans for the family.
“Given Tarnya was eating far too much then she was encouraged to eat a little less as well as eating better, all of which was aligned to NHS guidance.
“As with all TV shows there are pieces to camera done away from the contributors. The show also showcases my comments / opinions made in front of the family.
“The exaggeration of food intake I am not aware of. This may have been a Producer request, but I honestly don’t know.
He adds: “If Tarnya believes the show was bullying then why did she agree to sign up for the follow up series which was called ‘Fat Families – Second Helpings?’”
Fabulous has contacted Outline Production for a comment.
