AKMU’s Lee Suhyun has opened up about the serious health consequences she suffered during her extreme diet, revealing that her pulse became undetectable for months after she cut salt out of her meals almost entirely.
The singer shared the story in a video titled “Healthy Diet: Please Eat Only Like This (Meal Plan Edition),” uploaded to her personal YouTube channel, “Lee Suhyun Official,” on November 3. In the video, she cooks her go-to diet meals on camera while walking viewers through the trial and error behind her 30-kilogram weight loss, including the restrictive eating habits she now warns others against.
According to OSEN, Lee explained that her diet centered on an unchanging rule: always include carbohydrates, protein, and vegetables. Her most frequent meal was shabu-shabu, and while she used flavored broth, she said people might assume a diet meal should be eaten without any salt at all. That, she said, was exactly what she did during her strictest phase, eating sweet potatoes, potatoes, egg whites, and chicken breast with no salt.
“After eating that way for about a week, my stomach hurt,” she said. “I had no energy, and I could really feel myself becoming unhealthy.” She described pushing through on willpower alone because she was in a hurry to lose weight fast and felt she had to look gaunt on camera the very next day. “I don’t consider that a diet,” she said. “It’s an extreme measure.”
The most alarming consequence, she revealed, was that her pulse could not be detected. “My pulse couldn’t be detected. For nearly half of the year, my pulse couldn’t be detected,” she said. Her coach at the time repeatedly urged her to eat some salt, and she said her pulse only began to return once she stopped fearing salt intake. TopStarNews, which also covered the November 3 video, reported the same account, noting that Lee stressed long-term health management matters more than pushing hard for a short period to bring the number on the scale down.
Her message to viewers was direct: do not fear salt during a diet unless you are eating something excessively salty. “Don’t be afraid of salt when you’re dieting,” she said. “Be afraid of sugar instead. Being afraid of sugar is right.”
Lee also shared what motivated the transformation in the first place. According to OSEN, a blood test showed she was in a prediabetic state, and from that point she committed to exercise and weight loss, shedding 30 kilograms without the help of medication. She has said her first priority was becoming healthier, and that any diet or exercise routine that did not move her in a healthier direction had no place in her life.
The November 3 video is the latest chapter in a weight-loss journey Lee has discussed publicly in recent weeks. On October 29, she appeared on the YouTube channel Charles Enter, where she said she was still managing her diet and exercise but had grown tired of the process. She also addressed speculation that she had used the weight-loss drug Wegovy, calling it deeply unfair after the sustained effort she had put in. “It was a reward for all the time I had spent working and refining myself,” she said, pushing back on comments suggesting she had taken a shortcut.
In that same appearance, Lee spoke about the label that has followed her since the weight loss: “skinny-bone,” Korean slang for a physique so thin that the bones show. She said the term is not a compliment to her and does not reflect the look she wants. “My ideal look is absolutely not skinny-bone,” she said, adding that she feels she looks healthy in the mid-50-kilogram range and does strength training specifically to maintain a healthy appearance rather than an extremely thin one.
Lee Suhyun debuted as one half of the sibling duo AKMU alongside her brother Lee Chan-hyuk, winning SBS audition program “K-pop Star” in 2012 before going on to a decade-long career as one of Korea’s most respected vocal acts. The duo, known for songs built around Lee Suhyun’s clear vocals and her brother’s songwriting, has maintained a steady presence in Korean music while both members have also pursued solo projects, with Lee Suhyun running her own YouTube channel where she shares music and glimpses of her daily life.
Her latest video lands at a moment when extreme dieting and rapid weight loss remain hot topics in Korean entertainment, and Lee’s unusually frank account stands out for what it does not do: it does not present the 30-kilogram loss as a simple success story. Instead, she frames the harshest phase of her diet as a cautionary tale, urging viewers to choose sustainable habits over extreme measures and to stop treating salt as the enemy. As she put it in the video, the goal was never just to lose weight, but to build a healthier life she can actually maintain.
