Denise Welch piled on the pounds after she gave up alcohol.
The 59-year-old actress decided to eliminate booze from her life over six years ago but she has admitted she started to substitute her beverages with sweet treats and pies, which lead to her putting on over two stone in weight and a sugar addiction.
Speaking to the MailOnline, she said: "I had periods where I was much slimmer but all of the periods in life, in the last 20 years when I was slim without trying, it was the bad time in life. I had problems with alcohol and it was when I took alcohol out of my life six years ago that I started to replace alcohol with food.
"I wasn’t aware I was doing it at the time, it was a slow burn. Your body starts to crave sugar, people have this idea that you cut out alcohol and you lose weight, but it’s mostly not the case because your body craves sugar so much.
"I never had a sweet tooth in my life, I’m from a confectionery family so I’ve been around cakes all my life and never had a sweet tooth and suddenly I did and Lincoln was the same. We both gave up alcohol and we both ate all the pies, I still do enjoy a pie but I make an informed decision when to have one.
"What was happening was I was replacing alcohol addiction with food addiction and realised that because I was eating in a destructive way, it wasn’t healthy."
Denise realised she had a problem when she started to shovel down food in secret.
She explained: "I began secret eating and there was no need for me to do that.
"Who was I hiding it from? No one in my family had any problem with me doing what I wanted but I just realised I had a bad relationship with food and this is something that was going to become as bad for me as the alcohol addiction."
Denise has managed to lose two stone within two months on the LighterLife plan and now feels happier than ever before and a lot more confident with her phsyique.
Denise Welch piled on pounds after booze ban
