Lauren: “I’m very sexual… but I’m waiting for the fairytale”
Reality star Lauren Goodger exclusively reveals her newly slimmed-down body – and tells Closer’s Katie Banks why she’ll get her happy ever after this year
Her emotional struggle with H her weight has dominated the headlines since she first found fame in The Only Way Is Essex eight years ago – and after several attempts to ditch yo-yo dieting for good, Lauren Goodger is adamant she’s finally found the key.
Looking fresh-faced with a noticeably nipped-in waist and toned physique when she arrives at our shoot, Lauren, 31, has returned from three weeks at Jason Vale’s juicing retreat in Portugal. Just two months before jetting off to the luxury health escape, the reality star endured radical bodysculpting liposuction in Turkey with Elite Aftercare to transform her midriff and give her a shapely Kardashian-esque bottom.
NAKED CONFIDENCE
And after enduring weeks of painful bruising and swelling – as well as a wave of abuse from online trolls, who have cruelly mocked her new curves – excited Lauren says her total body overhaul was worth it.
“The whole process has been tough, but look at me now!” she says, confidently standing in her underwear and giving us a twirl. “I’ve lost 18lbs since I got back from Turkey and I’m planning to lose another stone, which will take me down from a size 10 to an 8. I’d still like to work on my arms and legs, though.
“I feel really sexy. I love walking around naked now – I look better without clothes! But it’s not just a physical transformation, I feel mentally stronger and ready to get on with my life. I have so much more energy and drive and I won’t be going backwards. This time, it feels different.”
Lauren’s battle with her weight was captured on cameras when she first burst on to our screens in TOWIE in 2010. Her then-boyfriend Mark Wright – who she dated on/off for ten years – was seen making cruel comments about her size 10-12 body, saying she was the “biggest one” of the group and that if she lost weight she would have “more control” over his wandering eye.
Shockingly, he even said during an episode in which Lauren was having a spray tan, “Why is she doing that, she
****** looks f 19st, the div. Why would you even bother?’’
Lauren then yo-yoed between a size 8-10 to a 16, trying every diet and boot camp under the sun, until she decided to launch a fitness DVD in 2015 and lost a whopping 4st in nine months. But she regained most of the weight just a year later. Now, she’s adamant that her new juicing regime is not just a short-term fix.
The reality star – who also had a corrective nose job for medical reasons in 2010, a breast op to take her from a size 34D to a 34E in 2013 and a rumoured bum lift – says, “There’d be times in the past when I’d be on one of my diets and then I would be starving and craving a Mcdonald’s quarter pounder and a cocktail. When I was on the juicing retreat, someone asked me if I was dying for some junk food but, for the first time, I wasn’t.”
JUICE DIET
Lauren’s three-week juice plan involved having a blended drink for breakfast, then a second juice for lunch made from carrot, beetroot and avocado. Around 4pm, she’d have her final juice of the day as a snack,
and then dinner would be a winter soup or a small plain salad.
She says, “Seeing the benefits of being healthy have really changed me this time. On the way to the shoot today, I even made the taxi driver divert so I could grab a coldpressed raw juice. I know that I can only do the extreme plan for a three-week stint but, for the rest of the time, I’ll be combining juicing with healthy eating and working out with a personal trainer three times a week. It’s sustainable and it’s giving me a new lease of life.”
And Lauren, who admits that she’s always put her boyfriends before anything else in her life, admits in a candid moment that she’s not ruling out a reunion with her jailbird ex, Joey Morrison.
She says, “I would never say never about going out with him again – we’ll have to see how it goes when he’s out. I can’t predict what will happen in my life.”
PREGNANCY PLANS
Meanwhile, Lauren admits she hasn’t been in a sexual relationship since she split up with Jake Mclean in 2016.
She laughs, “I’m a very sexual person, but I don’t want to be intimate with someone unless I’m in a relationship.
“Now I want to settle down and have the fairy tale. I’m prepared to wait for that.”
Surprisingly, despite the fact Lauren – whose parents split up when she was one – has no immediate dating plans, she insists that she’ll have a baby this year.
She adds, “I’m desperate to be a mum and I want it to be this year. I don’t care about ruining my body with a pregnancy because I can always get it back again. I hope I’ll be one of those girls who continues to train and eat healthily throughout – but who knows!
“I’ve never been on a date in my life – I always tend to just fall into relationships with people I already know.
“It’ll have to happen soon, though, because I’d love to get married, too, and I think that’s for life. My parents weren’t together when I grew up, which is not ideal, but it happens. Hopefully I will stay with the right man for the rest of my life.”
Then she adds, giggling, “But saying that, I’m not going to be someone who’s miserable for ten years in a c**p marriage if it all goes wrong!”
And now ex Mark, who’s been married to actress Michelle Keegan for almost three years, has secured his Hollywood dream as a presenter for E! show Extra, does Lauren ever think about extending an olive branch?
HAPPY FOR MARK
She says, “It’s all water under the bridge now. I’m happy for Mark to be successful out there. I’m sure he’s made his wife and family proud. “I used to go to LA all the time. Once I went over to Las Vegas and ended up at a party and sat at Drake’s table with Khloé Kardashian and R. Kelly. Khloé was tiny and so friendly. Drake kept looking at me suggestively, but I had a boyfriend with me.” While she’s single, Lauren says she keeps a close circle of girlfriends around her for support – including Ferne Mccann and Gemma Collins. Unbelievably, the three former TOWIE stars all live in the same Victorian apartment complex, which is known for being haunted. Lauren laughs, “I find it a little bit spooky. Sometimes I’ll hear random knocking on the door and I’ll think that it’s a ghost. But I’d like to think it’s a friendly one. “Ferne likes to prank-call me, putting on a funny voice and
‘I’m going to be a mum this year’
pretending to be a man called Dave. She does it when Danielle Armstrong comes to stay over with her. I need to prank her back.
“Gemma has been making me laugh on Celebs Go Dating – she has a will of iron and won’t be told what to do by anyone. I love her – we all need to get together for a pyjama party.”
JORDAN’S SURGERY WOES
And Lauren, who insists she no longer uses lip fillers, admits she was shocked to see her pal Jordan, also known as Katie Price, wearing bandages and drains filled with blood attached to her face as she recovered from surgery to fix a botched facelift.
She says, “I won’t say anything bad about Katie because she’s my friend, but she’s naturally a very pretty girl – she doesn’t need anything done. She went through a stage last year of looking very fresh-faced and young, but you can have too much done.
“Plastic surgery is very addictive. Some of my friends in Essex have lipo every year! I don’t regret the surgery I’ve had done. My recent lipo removed my stubborn love handles and gave me the kick-start I needed to transform my body. I love my body so much now, it was worth the pain.
“I won’t touch facial fillers, though, because I think they look bad. People say I look so different from when I started in TOWIE, but apart from the nose job, which I had for medical reasons, I’ve not had anything else done. Age naturally changes your face.”
Now Lauren’s happily looking to the future – and says nothing will hold her back.
She reveals, “This year I’m focusing on myself and my happiness. I’m planning to open my own makeup bar and I’d love to combine a juicing element with that, too.
“I’d also love a presenting gig on a show like Loose Women, as I’ve never been shy of voicing a controversial opinion! I can’t wait to see what’s in store.”
‘I love my body – it’s been worth the pain’