MasterChef star Julie Goodwin breaks her silence on ‘shocking’ weight loss as she issues stern slapdown to comments about her body after fans expressed major concerns: ‘Looks sick’

Julie Goodwin has issued a statement defending her weight loss after fans raised concerns for her health. 

The former MasterChef Australia star shared an update on Instagram on Thursday after a new photo, in which she looked very slim, was shared on her account on Wednesday, leading to comments from worried followers. 

‘Thanks to all who have expressed concern about my health. I am well and I am within the healthy weight range. My doctor concurs,’ the 54-year-old wrote. 

‘For those who have asked me for advice or tips, I am not qualified to provide this. It’s advice that should be sought from your trusted health professionals, not from me. I’m a TV cook,’ she continued. 

‘For those who want to comment on the shape and condition of my body please, do it on your own page because I’m tired of reading it. For that reason I’ll be turning off comments on this post’. 

From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the Daily Mail’s new showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. 

Julie concluded: ‘For all of us can we please find something more interesting to talk about. Can we please model kindness to our kids and grandkids and can we please leave this obsession with people’s looks back in the 1980s. Peace and love.’

The chef was prompted to speak out after a selfie shared this week led to comments inquiring about whether she is ‘sick’. 

‘I’m actually concerned or shocked to be honest but if you are healthy and well there is nothing to worry about,’ one fan commented. 

‘Oh Julie…. Too much weight loss,’ another chimed in, while one more said, ‘She is sick. She looks shocking’. 

‘Julie you are awesome but are you okay?’ someone else asked, with one more posting, ‘Are you okay Julie? You don’t look okay. Hope there’s nothing wrong’. 

‘She looks like a skeleton,’ one more person wrote, with yet another saying, ‘OMG you look so ill.’

Others defended Julie, with one person writing, ‘Love how people speculate she is on the jabs. My bet is she is looking after herself and eating the right foods.’

‘Omg Julie you look amazing! You have a beautiful smile. Keep shining!’ another said. 

One more chimed in: ‘Can everyone stop commenting on Julie’s weight and telling her she’s too thin? All you’re doing is projecting on her what YOU think she should look like. If she had always looked like this, no-one would say anything. 

‘Just be happy for her that she’s happy, her doctor’s happy, and she’s healthy!’ 

Julie recently revealed she has lost even more weight following her dramatic ‘accidental’ transformation, which saw her drop a whopping 20kg almost a decade ago.

Taking to Instagram, Julie shared a selfie of her looking thinner than ever following an appearance on Sunrise.

Julie let her greys grow and flaunted a more natural colour for her locks while showcasing her weight loss since winning the cooking show in 2009.

The kitchen guru looked slim as she encouraged fans to try her chicken pie with potato bake topping.

Despite her makeover, Julie still donned her signature wide-frame glasses in the post, while wearing a black and white striped shirt.

Back in 2016, Goodwin revealed that her dramatic weight loss had nothing to do with dieting and was certainly no cause for celebration.

‘It’s not that I’ve gone on some stupid, sad diet and dropped a whole heap of weight in a hurry. 

‘It’s not anything like that,’ she told Women’s Weekly at the time.

‘I am running a business and running around like a mad thing, and sometimes I forget to eat, none of which is healthy.’

Julie reprised her MasterChef appearance in 2012 for the MasterChef All Stars series.

She went on to appear on Ten’s I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here! in 2015.

More recently, Julie appeared on the 2024 season of Channel Seven’s hit show Dancing with the Stars. 

During her stint on the series, the show’s judges called her ‘a sexy vixen’, ‘a sassy minx’, and even a ‘dominatrix’.

The MasterChef winner revealed what she really thinks of the stunning response to her makeover for the dance competition in an interview with Daily Mail Australia.

‘That was unexpected and unfamiliar,’ Julie laughed.

‘My family thought it was hilarious. I’m normally cooking and running around after my granddaughter, not pushing a good-looking man around on the floor.

‘I was stoked with the judges’ feedback,’ she said. ‘It was nice to hear that I’d gotten the dance pretty right.’

Earlier this year, Julie revealed that she was on the verge of taking her own life at the height of her fame.

The famous foodie made the revelation in a frank chat with Ant Middleton on his podcast Head Game.

She revealed that following her winning turn on MasterChef in 2009, taking on too many work commitments had sent her to ‘the bottom of the well.’

‘The only way I could shut off my brain late at night, was to drink wine, so I was doing too much of that,’ she admitted.

‘So, I was self-medicating, and that’s a terrible, terrible way to sleep, because you wake up with your heart hammering, and it just all becomes this massive, you know, self-fulfilling prophecy.’

Julie then revealed that she had made the decision to end her life and was in the process of ‘executing a plan’ when two strangers changed the trajectory of her life.

‘I went right down to the bottom of the well, and I had made a decision that everybody, everybody, my colleagues, my children, my husband, my family, everybody would be better off if I just racked off and let them all be,’ Julie said.

Julie, who also recounted her struggles with mental health in her 2024 memoir Your Time Starts Now, added that the kindness of two strangers had changed her mind.

‘And that was the decision that I made, and that was the action I was taking, and I was stumbled upon by a couple of strangers who recognised that I was a person that needed some company.’

‘I was executing a plan.’

Julie continued: ‘I was nearly dead when I found out that I needed help, I was sitting on the edge of Brisbane Water [on the NSW Central Coast], and I was ready.

‘I was just trying to figure out what to do with my shoes. I didn’t know what to do with my shoes, and I was trying to figure that out.

‘They passed me by. And they turned around and came back and said: “You look like you need some company”. And so they just sat with me for a couple of hours and talked to me,’ she said.

Julie went on to recount how that simple act of kindness eventually saw her seek professional help.

‘Eventually I said: “I’m going to be all right now I’m going to call my husband.” And when I told him what had happened, he took me straight to the hospital,’ she said.

‘Then I became a client of the mental health system, and that’s what I remained for quite a long time. I was in and out of hospital five times.

Following her winning stint on MasterChef, Julie parlayed that success into a career that saw her open a cooking school, host a breakfast radio show on the Central Coast, and publish numerous cookbooks.

Julie revealed on the podcast that she had struggled to strike a balance between increasing work commitments and family life with husband Michael and their three sons Joe, 28, Tom, 27, and Paddy, 25.

‘That family element, all of a sudden, you know, they come, and let’s call a spade a spade, they come second best, don’t they?’ she said.

‘A lot of people don’t realise that is that you are actually, you know, the sacrifices that you make, right or wrong, in order to have this successful life can be at the detriment sometimes.’

She continued: ‘I look back at my calendar, like my Outlook calendar from that time and how the days were broken down into these tiny little chunks of all the different deadlines and the recipes and the columns and the appearances and the interviews and the travel and all those things, there was no category for self-care.

‘There was no category for downtime. Family barely featured in that calendar.It was: get from here to there, do this, do that.’

Julie added that her busy work schedule had left virtually no time for family at all.

‘At the end of those days, or those weeks when I’d been away, and certainly further down the track, when I opened a cooking school and I was on breakfast radio, all at the same time, what I had left at the end of the day when I went home to my family was nothing, nothing whatsoever.

‘They got the least of me. They got the worst of me,’ Julie said.

If you or anyone you know needs support, you can contact Lifeline on 131 114, or Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636