I Wouldn’t Eat for Five Days – Delta Burke on What She Did Maintain a Slimmer Figure

Delta Burke (67), best known for her work in Designing Women, is opening up about her drug usage back in the day to suppress her appetite and lose weight.

The Designing Women alum, who played the sassy diva-like ex-beauty queen Suzanne Sugarbaker, stopped by Glamorous Trash, a podcast hosted by Chelsea Devantez, where she got candid about her weight.

The 67-year-old revisited her 1998 book Delta Style: Eve Wasn’t a Size 6 and Neither Am I, with Devantez, an Emmy-nominated writer and comedian.

Burke recalled how she turned to crystal meth to maintain a thinner figure.

“I was in London going to drama school, and I went to this doctor,” she recounted during the podcast. “He gave me these pills, which made my heart race. But I lost weight.”

She also added that upon returning to the States, Burke asked for a refill of the medication, only to discover “they were illegal in America.” The former Miss Florida, who referred to the medicines as “Black Beauties,” added, “They were like medicine to me: take them in the morning so you won’t eat.”

She admitted that she eventually found someone to obtain the pills on the set of Filthy Rich, which ran for two seasons from 1982-1983. However, “it wasn’t a recreational thing” for her. 

“After you build up a tolerance to anything and it wasn’t working anymore,” she said.

And that’s when she was offered crystal meth as an alternative.

“Nobody knew about crystal meth at the time,” Burke said. 

“[They told me], ‘You chop it up. You snort.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to snort it.’” 

So, she put it in her cranberry juice and drank it instead. The What Women Want star said she would drink a glass before going to work and “wouldn’t eat for five days.” 

However, Burke remembers being criticized despite her many attempts to lose weight. 

“And they were still saying, ‘Your butt’s too big. Your legs are too big’,” the actress recalled. 

Burke shed light on the beauty standards of that era, where many made comments about how her “bosom and hips and wonderful curves” didn’t align with societal expectations, significantly impacting her mental health and ultimately leading to her exiting the show.

The experience was just as painful to her on the sets of Designing Women, but she now cherishes the show as it allowed her character to evolve. She also met her husband Gerald Lee McRane, best known for Simon & Simon, Major Dad, and Promised Land.

Burke has come a long way since then. “Now [I] look back at those pictures and go, ‘I was a freaking goddess.’” she says.

“I did look back at that and I realize I was beautiful, I was gorgeous, and nobody said that. All they said was what a pig I was and this, that and the other, which fed into my insecurities. I wish I had known — I wish every young woman could know — she is beautiful.”

The more inclusive world of today couldn’t agree more!