Delta Burke, 67, Shares the Extreme Ways She Tried to Lose Weight
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Delta Burke opened up about the extreme and dangerous ways she once attempted to lose weight, which included trying crystal meth.
She said she did so because of the public scrutiny she witnessed as a sitcom star in the ’80s and ’90s.
She ultimately left acting because she was “too emotionally fragile” to handle the “incredibly ugly” public narratives about her.
Everyone remembers The Golden Girls, but there was another quartet of women who ran the sitcom scene in the ’80s and ’90s—they were the cast of Designing Women, led by Delta Burke, who experienced her share of body-shaming by tabloids and critics. The scrutiny pushed the then-twenty-something to go to extreme measures to lose weight. Now, at 67, Burke is sharing the dangerous diet hacks she tried, and what she learned along the way.
Before landing in TV, Burke went to acting school in London, where she was prescribed obscure “pills” for weight loss, she told Chelsea Devantez on her Glamorous Trash podcast. “They made my heart race,” she said. “But I lost weight.”
Fast forward to her time on Filthy Rich in the early ’80s, where she was pressured to be smaller. She asked her doctor for more of the aforementioned pills, and discovered that the prescription was illegal in the United States. Eventually, she connected with someone who could sell her the “Black Beauties,” as she called them, off-market.
Before going to work, she would “take them in the morning so you won’t eat,” she recalled. “They were like medicine to me.”
Burke said she eventually built up a tolerance, and the Black Beauties stopped working. A colleague then recommended she try methamphetamine, a highly addictive stimulant and appetite suppressant that affects the central nervous system, per the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
“Nobody knew about crystal meth at the time,” she told Devantez. “[They told me,] ‘You chop it up. You snort it.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to snort it.’ So I put it in cranberry juice and [drank] it… and wouldn’t eat for five days.”
Even then, Burke’s weight remained a topic of conversation. “They were still saying, ‘Your butt’s too big. Your legs are too big,’” she said. “And I now look back at those pictures and go, ‘I was a freaking goddess.’ I didn’t have a clue. I wish I had a clue, I would’ve used it.”
Ultimately, being put under a very public microscope took a toll on Burke’s mental health, as it would for anyone. She said she was “emotionally too fragile” to deal with the “incredibly ugly” narratives about her size. In 1986, she was hospitalized. “I did have a breakdown,” she recalled. “It had become too much. I really couldn’t handle it and didn’t wanna go back.” Burke left Designing Women in 1991, per People—it ran for two more years.
“I thought I was stronger. I tried very hard to defend myself against lies and all the ugliness that was there and I wasn’t gonna win. I’m just an actress, you know. I don’t have any power,” Burke explained. “Hollywood will mess your head up. And I had always thought, ‘I want to be a famous actress.’ I thought that meant that you would be a famous and well-respected actress, but that’s not what it meant. And the moment I became famous, it was like, ‘Oh no, no, no. This is not what I had in mind at all. I don’t think I want to be this anymore.’ But then it’s too late.”
If you believe you are struggling with an eating disorder and need support, call the National Eating Disorders Association helpline at (800) 931-2237. You can text HOME to 741741 to message a trained crisis counselor from the Crisis Text Line for free.
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s free 24/7 hotline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
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