I’m A Celebrity star Lisa Riley has reflected on her life-changing weight loss after undergoing a breast lift and dropping six dress sizes.
The Emmerdale actress, 49, has been candid about her transformation, revealing she’s lost 12 stone over the past few years.
Riley is currently taking on jungle life in the latest series of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! alongside Eddie Kadi, Shona McGarty and Kelly Brook.
Speaking about the surgery she had after losing the weight, the Mandy Dingle actress said: “I’m now a size 16–18, but at my biggest I was a size 28.”
“My absolute guilt for years and years was blindness to portion control… I've completely cut out nibbling,” she shared about the mindset shift that helped her keep the weight off.
“I'm never lazy, I think it's hereditary, I really do.”
The TV star has previously explained that she only eats carbs before 1.30pm, opts for a big lunch and keeps dinner light, always before 7pm.
Elsewhere in the episode, she also got candid about the extent of her past drinking, recalling a time when she would get through up to three bottles of Malbec and two packets of cigarettes a night at the height of her addiction.
The topic came up when Jack Osbourne asked whether she avoids alcohol entirely before sharing how she’s been sober for a decade.
Describing her old habits as “crazy”, she told the camp: “[I had] three bottles of Malbec every night because mentally I needed it. But I've been to New York, I've been to AA a lot. I love it. I find the people so interesting.”
Osbourne, who has been open about his own struggles with alcohol and has been sober for more than 20 years, responded that he could see her embracing the process.
Riley said she began to lose her grip on things after her mum, Cath, died in 2012 aged 57 following breast cancer that later spread to her pelvis, ovaries and pancreas.
Speaking about why she chose to stop drinking, she said: “It's a decision I made for many personal reasons for myself where I knew enough was enough and I had to take total control of that.
“There was only me that could take control of my sobriety and the volume I was consuming.”
The soap star said she would put a brave face on at work, but be “crumbling” inside.
She continued: “I'd go to work and be like, ‘I'm ok, turn the radio on. Everything's great’. But inside I was the biggest broken biscuit in the memory of man and I'm not the sort of person that can be fake and turn that on that's not me.
“I got to the point where I couldn't turn my mind off. That constant suffocation of the wine, literally suffocating everything and two packets of Silk Cut.”
Riley has spoken openly about her sobriety before, telling the Loose Women panel in 2018 that she had to stop drinking after noticing “changes” in herself.
She explained that during her heaviest drinking period, she was filming Fat Friends for up to 12 hours a day, yet didn’t realise how extreme her alcohol intake had become.
Chatting to Nadia Sawalha, Kaye Adams and Linda Nolan at the time, she said there were several reasons she ultimately decided to give up alcohol completely.
If you have been affected by this story, advice and support can be found at alcoholchange.org.uk
