I QUIT BOOZE ..AND LOST 2 STONE
Denise Welch reveals why she’s healthier, happier and has the body confidence to strip down to her undies for Calendar Girls The Musical
DENISE Welch’s rock musician son is happy to go touring now he knows his mum is in a good place after turning her life around.
The former Corrie actress says giving up booze and then shedding two stone in two months has meant her sons, including Matty – frontman of The 1975 – can get on with their lives without worrying about her.
Denise turns 60 later this month and says she feels better than she has done in decades after stopping drinking and shedding the weight five years ago before her wedding to Lincoln Townley.
And it’s meant a big difference to her sons too – Matty, 29 and Louis,17, from her previous marriage to Tim Healy, and stepson Lewis, 25.
She said: “I can’t imagine my life if I hadn’t given up those things. It would have been a very different outcome for everyone involved.
“I’ve freed my children by it – they don’t worry about me and they can go off and live their lives.
“My son Matthew is a hugely successful musician. He said to me, ‘Mum, if you hadn’t met Lincoln and turned your life around, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing.’
“So that’s more important – the ripple effect it’s had on my children and Lincoln’s boy Lewis.”
Her turnaround has also brought some welcome knock-on effects, with her snoring reducing dramatically and her osteoarthritis and back pain having improved.
Denise and Lincoln, 45, decided to give up alcohol in 2012. But Denise realised she was beginning to replace the booze with food and piled on the pounds.
She added: “When things are really bad, some people eat and I drank. And I was in danger of changing that addiction over to eating and that’s what I’ve learned not to do.”
She turned to weight management firm LighterLife and followed the LighterLife Total Plan to shed more than two stone in two months. She has stuck to the LighterLife 5:2 programme since.
She chose LighterLife because their approach included cognitive behaviour therapy.
Denise said: “It was the only diet company who looked at what was going on in your mind and how that was going to change your relationship with food.”
She says she may still occasionally have fish and chips but doesn’t turn to food for comfort.
She added: “In times of sadness and celebration or emotional lows I don’t reach out for those foods to make me feel better because five minutes later, they make me feel 10 times worse. I make an informed decision to have them instead.”
She says she’s looking and feeling
Giving up alcohol doesn’t cure depression but it stops compounding the illness
better than she has in a very long time. “I think that’s because I’m mentally and physically much better and stronger than I was turning 50 and 40,” said Denise.
“Because I suffer from depression and have done for many years, if I am feeling mentally stronger then I look physically better.
“I’ve taken all the bad things out of my life and I’m also maintaining my weight and working hard with LighterLife to look and feel the best I can, so I’m no longer bothered about squeezing into a size eight or a 10. I’m comfortable in a 12.
“If I keep my weight down, the osteoarthritis in my knee is better. If I keep my weight down and look after myself, my snoring improves which obviously for my husband is fantastic.”
In addition to the health benefits the weight management programme has brought, learning cognitive behaviour therapy techniques has also helped Denise give up smoking.
But given her battles with mental health, it’s quitting alcohol that has been particularly significant for her.
The former Coronation Street star, who has always been very open about the fact she’s fought clinical depression for 29 years, said: “Giving up alcohol doesn’t cure depression but it stops compounding it.
“I do everything I can to keep it at bay and if it comes, it usually comes for a much shorter time.”
She said she was advised in the past not to talk about her mental health battles – but refused to suffer in silence in the hope that she could help others.
Denise said: “I was determined to try and take something that had
ripped my life apart and that of my family and try and turn it into something positive. People tried to shut me down – not in a mean way, in a protective way.
“They said, ‘Don’t talk about that, you’ll never work again.’ I said, ‘No I’m sorry. It was something I never thought would be part of my life. If I can help one person by speaking out about my experiences, then I will’. And I did.”
Denise is now very comfortable in her own skin. She will be stripping for a theatre run of Calendar Girls The Musical, which opens in August. But she won’t be baring all.
She said: “The moment when the clothes drop is very quick and also you’re all holding either a watering can or a couple of cakes.
“Nothing is seen. I don’t think they’d be packing out theatres if they thought there was some 60-year-old birds taking their clothes off. But regardless of doing Calendar Girls The Musical, I’ve got more body confidence now.
“That’s why I post bikini pictures on social media. I would cringe at the thought of going, ‘Look at me I’m 60 and how fab do I look in a bikini?’ That’s not what I’m doing.
“I’m saying I’m sick of misogynist publications telling women what they can and can’t wear. What age do you have to be to wear a bikini?
“If that gets one person to say, ‘I was feeling really down on myself today and I’ve just seen Denise Welch in her bikini, so I’m going to pop my bikini on and walk along that beach with pride … if one person does that, then I’ve done my job. And I will continue to do that until I’m 97.”
Denise reckons her career, like her private life, is improving with age.
She said: “I’ve been very fortunate in that my opportunities and roles are getting better as I get older.
“My husband tells me every day I’m beautiful and tells me every day that I’m the most talented person in the world and that also gives me wind beneath my wings to continue on. I’m very lucky to have that support.
“We met eight years ago in a nightclub at 6am, that’s how much we’ve turned out lives around.
“Some people feel in rut with alcohol or drugs or food and feel they can’t turn their lives around.
“I’m the living proof that it’s never too late not only to turn your life around but to find love in a way I’ve found it – with a young ’un as well!”
www.lighterlife.com