Nicely fitted blue jeans? Check. A figure-hugging white tank top? Check. A pair of impressively toned arms? Check.
Had my eyes deceived me? Was this the same Sam Armytage I’d seen splashed across the tabloids and my TV screen for years?
As she strolled confidently through Sydney Airport on Friday after a fly-in-fly-out trip to watch the Australian Open in Melbourne, I was struck by how… different she looked. In a good way.
Gone were the 48-year-old’s trademark loose-fitting dresses and billowy blouses, replaced by effortlessly sexy denim showing off her newly slimmed-down frame.
And I stress denim here because, as any woman over the age of 40 will tell you, we have a long-running love/hate battle with jeans. It’s an unspoken rule: we don’t reach for jeans unless we’re feeling skinny. Light blue jeans, in particular, can be our best friend – or our worst enemy.
Why? Because they are the ultimate barometer of weight loss. Unlike Sam’s signature forgiving dresses of the past, you can’t hide your body under jeans. Simply put, jeans don’t lie.
As she strolled confidently through Sydney Airport on Friday, I was struck by Sam Armytage’s remarkably slimmed-down look, writes Mail+ columnist Amanda Goff
And so it was, a few simple photos of Sam lugging her suitcase at the airport last week had me and my girlfriends all thinking the same thing: is Sam okay?
This isn’t a column about Sam’s jeans. Instead, I’m talking about weight loss and how it can often be a sign of something else – heartbreak.
The Daily Mail’s headline was ‘revenge body’, but my girlfriends and I came to a different conclusion: Sam’s on the ‘heartbreak diet’ – a diet women know all too well.
For those unfamiliar with the term, it’s not really a diet at all. It refers to the unintended weight loss that comes with the end of a relationship.
Scientists have confirmed it exists: the body releases hormones in response to grief that suppress appetite. Negative emotions can also slow the metabolism, meaning we want to eat less. And that’s before you even consider the impact of post-split anxiety.
Now, of course, I can’t say for certain how or why Sam has slimmed down recently. Perhaps she’s on a health kick. Some armchair experts would speculate about other methods. Maybe she really is gunning for a ‘revenge body’.
But I can’t help but connect her new look with the fact she only last month announced her separation from her husband, Richard Lavender, 61, after four years of marriage.
At the time, Sam said ‘all break-ups are hard’ but stressed that it was ‘amicable’.
The former Sunrise presenter, 48, has had quite the glow-up since splitting from her husband, Richard Lavender. She is pictured left in June 2023 and right in November 2024
I can’t help but connect Sam’s stunning new look with the fact she only last month announced her separation, writes Amanda. (Sam and Richard are pictured after their engagement in 2020)
I admire her for taking the high road, but also find her opening salvo quite revealing.
I’m sure for someone who waited until her mid-forties to find Mr Right, having it all fall apart within four years was, indeed, ‘hard’. Frankly, it must have been devastating.
Sam looks sensational, but when I study those photos of her last week – as well as pictures from her solo appearance at the races in November – I see a woman who appears to be privately struggling but is perhaps too proud to say so publicly.
Of course, she is far from the only member of the skinny celebrity brigade to emerge post-divorce with a remarkably swift slimmed-down body.
Take radio star Chrissie Swan, whom I honestly find hard to recognise these days.
She looks like a completely different woman after losing half her body weight in just a few years, coinciding with her split from her partner of 15 years, Chris Saville, in 2021.
She has lost a reported 90kg, which she attributes to quitting alcohol and ‘long walks’. Very long walks, I’m guessing.
Chrissie Swan looks like a completely different woman after losing half her body weight in just a few years, coinciding with her split from her partner of 15 years, Chris Saville, in 2021
Then there’s Jackie O. She didn’t immediately start shrinking after her 2018 split from husband Lee Henderson, but following her secret stint at a California rehab centre in 2022, the weight has fallen off – dramatically.
Once tipping the scales at 80kg, the former WW ambassador is now thinner at age 49 than she was in her twenties, having lost an incredible 18kg and counting.
She has denied using Ozempic or similar drugs and says she shed the kilos ‘the hard way’. I don’t suggest otherwise.
And now there’s Sam, following in their (very light) footsteps. The one thing they all have in common? Their new bodies came after very public break-ups.
My girlfriends and I often joke a divorce is the quickest way to lose five kilos, intentionally or otherwise. We’re either too depressed to stomach food or we hit the gym with newfound gusto and swap Uber Eats for protein and salad.
It’s a rather shallow way to look at it, and frankly I’m a little ashamed to admit this, but surely losing a few centimetres from your waistline and seeing those cheekbones again is the one silver lining of heartbreak?
Not so, says human behaviourist Anita Tomecki.
Jackie O didn’t immediately start shrinking after her 2018 split from husband Lee, but following her secret stint at a California rehab centre in 2022, the weight has fallen off – dramatically
She tells me that while it’s common for women to lose weight after a break-up, there is a distinct downside: the more our bodies shrink, the unhappier we are.
‘People can feel so drained from crying after a break-up that eating is the last thing they want to do. The mind is full of self-talk: was I not good enough? I’ve been abandoned, rejected, betrayed. I’ll be single forever, no one will want me…
‘All of these thoughts send the nervous system into overdrive and adrenaline coursing through the body will be burning up calories.’
I’ll make a personal confession here: the thinnest I’ve ever been was after a break-up.
Years ago, when a boyfriend dumped me, he coldly said: ‘Why do you want to be with someone who quite clearly doesn’t want to be with you?’
His words cut deep, and I went full ‘eff you’ mode, throwing myself into clean-eating and punishing myself at the gym as a form of revenge.
Sure, I looked great in jeans, but the sad reality was that I was devastated. My friends clocked it straight away. ‘Wow, you look amazing’ soon gave way to ‘are you okay?’
They were right. I wasn’t okay. And my weight loss certainly wasn’t some girl-power comeback; it was heartbreak dressed up as a size 8.
Amanda (pictured) knows all about the so-called ‘heartbreak’, and admits the thinnest she’s ever been was after a bad break-up
I poured my pain into looking good, but the truth was I was barely holding it together. My weight loss, while commended in today’s body-image-obsessed society, wasn’t a victory; it was a mask for my depression.
‘Extreme weight loss after a break-up is more likely to be mean low self-worth, seeking validation, wanting to feel in control and negative self-talk,’ says Anita. This assessment certainly resonates with me, although I am not suggesting it applies to the celebrities mentioned elsewhere in this piece.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but my truth is this: the skinnier the jeans, the sadder I usually am. Luckily, with the help of recovery and good friends, I’ve been able to find happiness. And as I became truly comfortable with myself, my weight became stable.
At the age of 50, I’ve finally settled into a body shape that is natural to me. And I no longer think wistfully about how skinny I was during my heartbroken years.
Anita agrees. ‘Try not to get too attached to the weight loss as it is usually fuelled by adrenaline,’ she says. ‘It will not be sustainable in the future. No one can live healthily in the heartbreak state forever.’
So, whether it’s a ‘revenge body’ or a ‘heartbreak diet’, my message to anyone in the throes of a break-up is there’s only one path to healing: find peace within yourself.
And trust me, it’s not a number on a scale. Or a pair of light blue jeans.
