Lisa Riley has "never felt better" after shedding 12 stone.
The ‘Emmerdale’ star went from a size 30 to a size 14 in just two years when she overhauled her lifestyle and ditched junk food in favour of healthier meals and exercise, and she now feels better than ever after learning to love her natural curves.
She said: "I love my 40s and I have never felt better.
"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."
Lisa was first pushed to lose weight when she appeared on ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ in 2012, but the real drive came after the devastating loss of her mother to breast cancer that same year.
Now, the 44-year-old actress says she’s "so proud" of everything she’s accomplished, and is pleased she can be a source of inspiration to others.
She added: "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."
But Lisa doesn’t want her weight loss to define her career, and she sympathises with singing superstar Adele, whose own dramatic transformation has been a topic of debate.
Speaking to The Sun newspaper, she said: "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."