Denise Welch shares doctors health alert that led to | UK News

Denise Welch has opened up about a physician’s warning she acquired after she put on two and a half stone. The Loose Women panellist shared her expertise of quitting alcohol and being sober since 2013, but then mentioned she “replaced alcohol with food”. The 67-year-old is working with LighterLife as half of their ongoing partnership and spoke solely to Express Online. Denise, recognized for her roles in Hollyoaks and Waterloo Road, first joined the Loose Women programme in 2005. She married her husband, Lincoln Townley, in 2013 and has been sober since, but admitted that she gained weight after cutting out booze from her life. 

She mentioned: “Now, many people give up alcohol and lose weight. Sadly, I was the other way. I put on 2.5 stone because I replaced alcohol with food. So, of course, I gave up drinking, and all of the sugar that had flowed through my veins for all of those years had gone.”

Denise added: “I suddenly was putting my head into a cheesecake and eating it from the inside out. And I realised that I was doing things like secret eating. Now, there was no one in my family or in my house who was remotely keeping tabs on my eating.

“I used to be doing a play with Keith Allen in Kingston, and I tripped and fell on a bridge, and I went to see this physician about my knee, and he mentioned to me, ‘You’ve obtained osteoarthritis in your knee, and you need to lose weight.’ 

“Anyway, it was a warning sign for me, and also my now husband had proposed to me, so I had a wedding that I was going to be planning for as well. So health-wise and aesthetically, I knew I needed to lose weight.” 

Speaking about LighterLife, Denise mentioned: “I honed into LighterLife because it was about changing your relationship with food, and I realised that moving forward, I needed something more than a normal diet. I needed to change my behaviours. 

“I obtained in contact with them, and I began on the plan, and I misplaced over two stone in two months, which is strictly what they are saying. If you stick to their plan, you’ll lose a stone a month.”

LighterLife, for which Denise is an ambassador, uses mental approaches such as cognitive behavioural therapy and group therapy. She added: “I felt higher than I’ve in so long because, of course, I used to be finally getting every nutrient that I needed, and I reached my goal, and I’d misplaced two stone by my marriage ceremony.

“I’m a very proud ambassador and one of the the greatest joys of the last few years is spending time and seeing the journeys of so many women and men, but it’s mostly the women that I do the photo shoots with, and those are the people that I tend to see the most.” 

Denise Welch is working with LighterLife as half of their ongoing partnership. LighterLife is a main weight loss programme that combines formula-based nutritionally full diet plans with cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to help people holistically rework their lives. Find out more at www.lighterlife.com.