Shaping up

WHEN actress Lisa Riley arrived at ITV for her appearance on Loose Women last week, two of the presenters walked straight past her. They didn’t recognise the Emmerdale and Strictly Come Dancing star who has undergone a complete transformation in the past year by losing eight stone.

Lisa, 39, who dropped seven dress sizes and now wears a size 16, lost weight by eating healthily and overhauling her lifestyle.

She wasn’t the only super slimmer in the news. Oliver Bates, 24, lost an astonishing 25st with Slimming World and now weighs 13st 13lbs. His waist size has dropped from 64in to 34in.

Losing such a significant amount of weight is life- changing and a tremendous achievement. However people who shed multiple stones are often left with an unwanted complication: loose and flabby skin.

Lisa has revealed she may now need surgery after her dramatic loss, saying her “stomach looks like untossed pizza dough”.

“I’ll probably need surgery. As every fitness teacher warned me, no rowing machine in the world will get rid of excess skin,” she said.

Even though skin has the ability to expand and contract to a remarkable degree ( as it does during pregnancy) it can only stretch so far before it loses its elasticity, a bit like a balloon that has been blown up and deflated. There are several factors that can influence how badly you will be affected, including how much weight you’ve lost, how old you were when you lost the weight, how many times you’ve lost and gained the weight back and how quickly you lost it ( the faster you lose it, the less time your skin has to tighten naturally).

There are surgical and non- surgical solutions to this problem, although some are difficult and painful.

The surgical body lifT

The most effective way to remove excess skin after dramatic weight loss is with a surgical body lift.

This is no quick fix. It is a major operation with a long and painful recovery period. It involves removing the unwanted