Inside Lisa Riley’s body battles from how she shed 12 stone WITHOUT fat jabs to surgery to rid herself of ‘saggy’ skin

LISA Riley is riding high on I’m A Celebrity, and has cemented herself as one of the most popular campmates this year.

Over the years the Emmerdale actress, 49, has been very honest about her weight battle, something which she has spoken candidly about in the jungle.

Lisa burst onto the scene when she joined Emmerdale in 1995 as Woolpack barmaid Mandy, and was an instant hit.

After quitting the Dales in 2001, she went on to star in drama Fat Friends, host You’ve Been Framed, join the Loose Women panel and come fifth on Strictly Come Dancing in 2012.

It was her time on the BBC dance show that first prompted Lisa to lose weight.

At the time the actress said she wanted to prove to people she wasn’t a “chunky monkey”.

Lisa dropped 4st and became the show’s first female contestant to lift up her male dance partner – the late Robin Windsor, who died in 2024.

However, over the years the actress has been honest about going up and down on the scales, and how she had surgery to remove her “saggy skin” caused by weight loss.

Here we take a look at Lisa’s incredible weight loss journey, and how she did it without fat jabs.

HUGE WEIGHT LOSS

It was the devastating loss of mum Cath to breast cancer aged 57 in 2012 that pushed Lisa to overhaul her lifestyle.

She ditched junk food and takeaways, cooked healthier meals and took up exercise, going from a size 28 to size 14 in just under two years.

By 2016, the star had lost a whopping eight stone.

She revealed at the time how she had shed a stone in one week, after going down to just 400 calories a day

At the time Lisa revealed how she had checked into the Slimmeria retreat, run by diet guru Galia Grainger, where her days were spent exercising and eating healthy meals.

She threw herself into a regime where she was up at 7.15am and in bed by 9pm.

Lisa was also not allowed to consume more than 400 calories a day or eat after 6.30pm.

‘SAGGY SKIN’

Over the years, Lisa has lost a whopping 12 stone.

However, due to shedding such a huge amount of weight, the star was left with a large amount of “saggy skin”.

Lisa bravely opened up about the torment this loose skin caused her.

Speaking to the Mirror previously, she said: “The excess skin in suffocating.

“The skin is the most disgusting thing that has ever happened to me and it is getting worse.”

In 2017, Lisa decided to go ahead with the surgery to remove the excess skin.

Speaking after the op, she told Loose Women: “People forget how gigantic I was.”

“With the skin removal I lost twelve stone, one pound.

“The surgeon chopped off one stone, four pounds.”

“Since then my weight has more or less stayed the same.”

A year after having the skin removal surgery, Lisa shared a candid Instagram post about how it had changed her life.

“Just got back from the gym and had a MASSIVE tear in my eye for the ABSOLUTE good!!!”, the star penned.

“It’s a year ago today, that I had my 2nd operation to complete my body and remove all the excess skin…never for one single second did I think I would achieved the weight loss, body and mind changes I went through!”

Lisa also revealed in the I’m A Celebrity jungle how she has had TWO breast uplifts.

FEELING ‘BETTER THAN EVER’

Lisa previously opened up about “feeling better than ever”.

She made the revelation when she made her explosive return to Emmerdale as Mandy in 2019.

In an exclusive chat with The Sun, 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 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.”

MAINTAINING WEIGHT LOSS

Lisa has continued to maintain her weight loss by “cutting out snacking” and also being active.

She spoke candidly about this in the I’m A Celebrity camp, when she told her co-stars: “I’m now a size 16-18, but at my biggest I was a size 28.” 

Lisa added: “My absolute guilt for years and years was blindness to portion control… I’ve completely cut out nibbling.” 

She went on to say: “I’m never lazy, I think it’s hereditary, I really do.” 

Lisa also stopped drinking a decade ago, something she talked to fellow campmate Jack Osbourne about, as he is also sober.

She quit boozing after admitting to “drinking three bottles of red wine a night”.

“There was only me who could take control of my sobriety and the amount I was drinking,” she said.

“I genuinely could not cope when my mum died. I got to the point I couldn’t turn my brain off and the wine suffocated everything.”

Lisa also previously told The Sun how she gets infuriated when people accuse her of having a gastric band.

She said her weight loss, and continued maintenance, is down to “hard work”.

Lisa explained: “Listen, I could eat a family-sized trifle all by myself. And crisps were my heroin! I still miss them.

“Not to mention being able to polish off a bottle of Malbec easily. But I radically changed my eating habits.

“I cut out carbs and now eat lots of fresh fruit and veg. I still exercise a lot – Zumba classes and the like. And at the beginning I went to boot camp a few times to give me a kick-start.”