EX-EASTENDERS star Lorraine Stanley is a whopping seven stone lighter since leaving the BBC soap, but she regrets the way she got thin.
The actress, 49, played Karen Taylor, a working-class mum from a council estate, who wore her heart on her sleeve and her clothes several sizes bigger.
When she left the show in 2024, she decided to prioritise her health after becoming “really big” and said: “It’s not a vanity thing…it’s a health thing.
“My mum’s had a heart bypass, my dad died of a heart attack, it’s in our family, and all the weight I was carrying was around my belly… I was scared I was going to have a heart attack.”
She took drastic measures to get in shape – getting a gastric sleeve, but “in hindsight wishes [she] had just [lost weight] with diet and exercise, because ultimately, any time I’m not in a happy place, I could just start eating and I could put it back on”.
Lorraine is not the only celebrity who has regrets about the way they lost weight…
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Double DVD shame
Natalie Cassidy, 42, another EastEnders actress, was one of many celebs who released a fitness DVD in the noughties.
Speaking to the Comfort Eating with Grace Dent podcast, Natalie admitted her 2007 tape Then and Now was a mistake.
“I was very overweight and they approached me and said ‘Listen, we’re going to give you £100,000, we’re going to get you really fit, and you’re going to lose four stone,’” she explained.
Natalie was starstruck by the amount of money she was offered, but realises “it wasn’t the right thing to do”.
She added: “You are losing a lot of weight in a three or four-month period, twelve or sixteen weeks, low calories and training every day.
“[Then] as soon as the DVD came out, I ate for England. I put all the weight back on in eight weeks.”
Another famous face who jumped on the fitness DVD hype was Scarlett Moffatt.
After reaching fame on Googlebox and then winning I’m A Celebrity, the now mother-of-one, 35, lost three stone, dropping from a size 18 to 8, and at the time, claimed it was all thanks to a few exercises and a 700-calorie-a-day diet.
On the DVD, 27-year-old Scarlett tells unsuspecting fans, who paid £9.99 for a copy: “If I can do it – a professional couch potato – then you can too. With the help of . . . this cunning plan.”
But The Sun on Sunday revealed she had also secretly endured a gruelling boot camp and went on a crash diet of only 300 calories a day to slim from 11st 4lb to 8st.
The TV star’s fitness DVD sold tens of thousands of copies and was in the top-selling sport and fitness charts, peaking at number two. She is understood to have earned at least £100,000 from the fitness programme.
But it’s her “biggest regret”.
Reflecting on that period of her life, Scarlett said on the BoobShare podcast: “Something I don’t talk about ever is an ad on a fitness DVD, which I always say is like, my biggest regret.
“I was so young…I was in my early 20s, and I was very new to this [celebrity] industry.
“[I have] apologised about doing the before-and-after pictures because now I realise how detrimental AR [augmented reality] is to people’s mental health.”
I was very overweight and was offered £100k to get fit and lose 4st.
Natalie Cassidy
Scarlett added that she can “honestly hand on heart” say that her time losing weight for the workout DVD was “the most miserable time” of her life.
It was reported that Scarlett had a clause in the DVD contract to maintain her new 8st weight for a year after it was released, but she “rebelled” against this because she “didn’t like how it happened”.
“I purposefully started putting weight on. I was sort of like, ‘If I get big again, it can’t get brought up’. I can’t have this stigma attached to me about this DVD, and people will stop buying it,” she told Frankie Bridge on her Open Mind podcast.
Kerry Katona’s ‘saggy boobs’
Kerry Katona, 45, has experienced significant weight changes over the years, but last year, the TV personality said she looks “better 1768036985 than at 18 [years old]”.
The mum-of-five’s most recent weight loss was two stone, and saw her drop to a size six.
Speaking exclusively to The Sun, she revealed earlier this week that she looks even “thinner in real life”.
But she’s not entirely happy with her smaller body, because her breasts have also shrunk in size.
She candidly told Closer: “I remember when Brian McFadden and I split, I was a fat cow with GG boobs, and I ended up losing so much weight with stress that I had to have implants because my boobs looked so deflated.
Celebs weight loss regrets in numbers
The famous faces regretted the way they lost the below weight…
Lorraine Stanley – 7st
Natalie Cassidy – 4st
Scarlett Moffatt – 3st
Kerry Katona – 2st
Daisy May Cooper – 10st
Melissa McCarthy – 5st
Oprah Winfrey – 4.78st
Total: 37.7st
“[Since losing two stone], they’re just saggy fun bags now!”
In a bid to add some shape to her “saggy” breasts, Kerry underwent a breast augmentation.
“Ever since losing weight, I feel like I’ve also lost my old boobs, so I’m excited to have some again. I’m going under the knife again for my long-awaited boob job. I just want my own boobs back. I don’t want massive boobs or anything really fake, just my boobs again!”
Daisy’s slimdown ends show
Daisy May Cooper, 39, broke through our screens in 2017 as Kerry in the iconic BBC comedy series This Country.
But the star admitted the series, which aired from 2017 to 2020, cannot make a return because of how much her appearance has changed.
Three years ago, Daisy embarked on a weight loss journey and lost a whopping ten stone.
She followed a Keto diet, gave up alcohol and addressed a food addiction.
Making fun of my weight was a national sport for over two decades.
Oprah Winfrey
Speaking to Grazia, Daisy said: “I’m so for body positivity but when I was at my biggest I was at my most miserable and I had a massive food addiction. I wasn’t healthy. I couldn’t breathe when I was walking up the stairs. I was so unhappy.”
Following such a huge amount of weight lost, Daisy “did go in to have a consultation for a tummy tuck [but] the surgeon scared the s*** out of [her]”.
Instead, she uses “Spanx to hold all that in”.
Hollywood’s all-liquid diets
Melissa McCarthy, 55, has been “every size in the world” and has stopped trying to achieve a certain weight.
“I have lost weight, but I’ll be back again”, she told Refinery29 in 2016. ‘I’ll be up, I’ll be down, probably for the rest of my life.”
But one extreme diet she won’t ever try again is an all-liquid diet, which she followed with the supervision of a doctor, after landing her role on Gilmore Girls.
The 500-calorie diet led her to lose 70lbs (5st) in four months, but she “felt starved and crazy half the time”.
“I’d never do that again,” she told People magazine.
Like Melissa, Oprah Winfrey has always been open about her attempts and struggles to lose weight, but there was one point in her weight loss journey which she has called her “biggest regret”.
The 71-year-old Hollywood icon said “making fun of my weight was a national sport” for more than two decades.
In comments reported by NBC, the talk show host told a livestream and live audience: “I want to acknowledge that I have been a steadfast participant in this diet culture through my platforms, through the magazine, through the talk show for 25 years.
“I’ve been a major contributor to it. I cannot tell you how many weight loss shows and makeovers I have done, and they have been a staple since I’ve been working in television.”
But she admitted an item on a 1988 edition of The Oprah Winfrey Show was one of her “biggest regrets” when she rolled a wagon of 67lbs (4.7st) of animal fat onto the stage to represent the weight she had recently lost thanks to a liquid diet and exercise.
She had starved herself for months, she said, admitting that it “sent a message that starving yourself with a liquid diet and set a standard for people watching that I, nor anybody else, could uphold. The very next day, I began to gain the weight back”.
“I own what I’ve done, and now I want to do better.”