Emmerdale star Lisa Riley has opened up on her impressive 12 stone weight loss and admitted she's pleased her transformation will inspire others to lose weight.
The 44-year-old actress, best known for playing Mandy Dingle in soap land, went from a size 30 to a size 14 in just under two years after losing her mum to cancer back in 2012.
After over hauling her lifestyle, ditching takeaways and junk food and starting to exercise, Lisa transformed her figure.
Speaking on the huge weight loss, Lisa said, "I am curvy and I love my bum. I wear a four-inch mini skirt on set and we joke it might not be J-Lo but it’s mine! But it’s important that everybody should live the life they want to. Nobody has any rights to judge a person about the way they look.
"I am so proud of everything I have done. At my funeral, the priest is not going to say, ‘Thank you for coming, Lisa Riley was fat!’. He is not going to mention my size, as it doesn’t matter.
"I love the fact I can inspire people to be healthy and make them believe that if they want to make it happen they can. But I have given so much more to people and my career," she told The Sun.
Highlighting that she doesn't want her weight loss to overshadow her telly achievements, Lisa compared herself to Adele, who got the world talking when she revealed her own impressive seven stone weight loss earlier this year.
"It’s as if we are going to forget how many Grammys she has won and all of a sudden go, ‘She has lost an awful lot of weight’. Let’s talk about her talent and how phenomenal she is.
"Of course she looks stunning, amazing and sensational but it’s about how she has turned a corner in her life — just as I did when mum died. I was petrified of developing Type 2 diabetes and I have got a feeling that she will have had some light bulb moment that triggered her, too."
