Chanelle on gastric sleeve op:
Having battled with her weight for years, Chanelle Hayes reveals she’s had surgery after her food addiction left her feeling like a prisoner in her home
“It felt taboo – but it’s changed my life”
She’s been looking notably slimmer and confidently displayed her newly-svelte frame in a crop top and leggings while walking her dog recently. Now Chanelle Hayes has revealed she’s had a secret gastric sleeve fitted and lost 7st after her “addiction” to food left her depressed and living like a hermit.
The former Big Brother star, 33, has gone from 17st 4lbs and a size 18 to a trim 10st and size 10 after having key-hole surgery to cut and staple her stomach, reducing its capacity from “a bag of sugar to a sausage” and limiting her food intake.
Chanelle – who also revealed she’s training to become a nurse – said the surgery has “changed [her] life”, adding, “No matter how many hours I did at the gym, I was relentlessly eating and eating out of control, like some sort of weird addiction to food or something. I just kept getting bigger and bigger.”
She underwent the procedure during the first lockdown last year, and admitted it took her a while to speak out because of the negative connotations around weight-loss surgery. She said, “Surgery can be quite taboo as the only way out. But if you’re addicted to food, you can’t live without food... how can you break this addiction if you’re still eating this food every day?
“I wanted to come out and say I had weight-loss surgery to normalise it and prove it’s not a bad thing that I needed external help to do this. Not everyone can do this on their own.”
DOCTOR’S WARNING
Since rising to fame on BB in 2007, Chanelle – who is dating accountant Dan Bingham – has been open about fluctuating between a size 6 and a size 20, citing depression as the reason for kick-starting her bad eating habits in 2013. She dropped four dress sizes in 2014, but later revealed she didn’t slim down in a healthy way, saying she’d starved herself and that her metabolism had been “messed up” due to constant dieting.
Chanelle – who’s mum to son Blakely, 10, with ex-footballer Matthew Bates and Frankie, three, with PE teacher Ryan
Oates – later revealed that years of dieting had left her suffering with severe hair loss, leading to a hair transplant in 2019.
Following Frankie’s birth in 2018, Chanelle – by then a size 18 – told Closer that the excess weight had left her with serious health issues, including back problems and knee pain, and that doctors had warned she’d likely become diabetic if she didn’t adopt a healthier lifestyle.
FINALLY CONTENT
Chanelle told Closer at the end of 2019 that she wanted to get to grips with her weight once and for all, saying 2020 would be her year of “feeling good about [herself] again.”
But last week she admitted lockdown had resulted in her binge-eating again because of the stress. Reflecting on how she felt about her spiralling weight and revealing she lived like a “hermit” , she said, “I didn’t speak to anyone for a year. I literally saw nobody... I didn’t even have a life.”
But following her gastric sleeve op last year, she embarked on a new fitness regime – with Closer previously reporting how low-impact exercise, such as walking and gentle running was helping overhaul her lifestyle, along with healthier meals of salad and eggs.
And Chanelle, who revealed she only eats 400 calories per meal, said she’s in the best place she’s been for a long time.
She said, “I don’t remember ever being this happy or content with where my life is going... Not just looks, [but] because it’s had such a huge impact on my mental and physical health.”
By Lisa Blake