I thought I was too selfish to have a child... but I’ve grown up & I’m ready to be a mum
LISA RILEY: HOW WEIGHT LOSS MADE ME BROODY
Lisa Riley had always been adamant she didn’t want children. After losing her beloved mum Cath and grandparents to cancer, the actress and Loose Women star feared passing on her genes to a baby of her own.
She also believed that, being obese, a smoker and very unhealthy, she too would die young, leaving her child to grow up without a mother.
But now that she’s lost 12st 7lb, given up the booze and cigarettes, and found the man of her dreams, Lisa is not ruling out having a baby.
And she says she may even consider IVF treatment.
As she launches her Honesty Diet book, serialised in the Mirror this week, explaining exactly how she conquered her battle with the bulge, Lisa says she is happier than ever and can finally imagine becoming a mum.
The star says the realisation she did want children came just before she was about to go under the knife to remove the unsightly and painful loose skin her dramatic weight loss had left her with.
She explains: “I don’t know why I did it but the first question I asked before my surgery was, would I still be able to have children?
“Why did I ask that question? I wanted to know would the skin be able to stretch? Would the wound open up? I actually shocked myself.
“My gene pool is always going to be there, but I can’t be a ticking timebomb. What I can think is that I’m going to live my life to the fullest, and hopefully with what I’ve done I have added years to my life.
“I never wanted to put a child through the agony of losing their mum, something I know only too well. But by making huge changes I believe I’ve saved my own life, so it has eradicated that fear of dying.”
Doctors have now reassured her there is no physical reason she wouldn’t be able to go through a pregnancy. Lisa, 41, says: “When my brother had his sons, it almost confirmed to me that I didn’t want children.
“It scared me. I love my brother and his boys more than life itself, but he was always the person who wanted the family routine. It is so not me.
“So when he had the children I saw this structured life and it made me want to run to the hills.
“But I was speaking to Jane Moore at Loose Women, who I adore, and I said to her, ‘We just go travelling at the drop of a hat and you can’t do that with a baby’. Jane said, ‘Course you can, you just take the child with you’.
“She is so right, but I had to realise that for myself.”
She goes on: “I used to think I was too selfish to have a child, but I am not selfish any more. I just feel really grown up. I was so obsessed with my job. All my friends were married and had kids, yet I was single with no kids but crazy busy.
“When I realised there was more to life than working myself into the ground, I started enjoying myself.”
People who meet Lisa now say she is glowing with happiness. Previously, she had a series of disastrous relationships with men she would never have dreamed of bringing a child into the world with.
But now she knows she is with the right man for life, her attitude has changed. “I was always thinking about myself,” Lisa says. “But now I am in a relationship, you think of each other so much more. You realise caring for someone is more important than anything. In other relationships, I know I didn’t truly care about them or them about me.
“It is a combination of my weight loss, a healthier lifestyle and finding the right person that has changed my mindset.
“As far as relationships go, I don’t have the best track record. But when you realise the man that you love, who loves you back, is never going to do you over, is never there for the wrong reasons, then it can change your mind. I have grown to trust more.”
But Lisa realises time is against her. “What I have realised is I’ve got to start living myself now. The one thing that scares me is that all my friends who have had IVF later in life, the reason it has not worked is because of pressure. “For this to work, I have to take all the pressure off me, because I think Mother Nature then puts the barrier up. I’m 42 in July. If [pregnancy] happens it will be sent from my mum and I believe that completely.
“Possibly I’d have IVF, yes. But several very dear friends spent thousands and thousands of pounds on IVF and it didn’t work. “The second they took the foot off the gas, they got pregnant naturally.”
Lisa is in such a good place now,
I don’t know how I’d cope with the changes to my body LISA RILEY ON PUTTING ON WEIGHT IN PREGNANCY
she says she doesn’t need a child to complete her personal jigsaw. And she’s a firm believer that women should be able to choose to remain childfree without judgment. “I am not ruling out having a baby, but I will not saturate myself with pressure,” she says firmly. “If I have a child I’ll be overjoyed. But we are not put on this earth as baby-making machines. It is not a necessity to have children.”
Adoption is another route Lisa would consider. She and partner Al share a love of travel and have visited places including Africa and Asia, where her eyes have been opened to extreme poverty.
She explains: “There are places I have been around the world where I have seen suffering, so I wouldn’t rule out adoption either. I could give a child a wonderful life.” Lisa admits the one thing she would find tough if she got pregnant would be gaining weight again. Even a year on from finally being able to zip up a size-12 frock, you can see the shock and delight on her face as she tries on clothes for our photoshoot. “I’m still in denial that I’ve lost all this weight” she says. “I love looking back at pictures of the old me, I can’t believe the difference. I don’t know how I’d psychologically cope with the changes to my body. I’d have to deal with it like I dealt with giving up smoking, booze and the food.
“It is not just about the stones and pounds, you have to deal with the psychology of it, too.
“As hard as it is, in theory it is nine months and there would only be six months where you look pregnant... so I have to get that neurosis out of my head.”
Lisa knows she now has the recipe for weight-loss success, and she can’t wait to share her tips in her new book. But she is very clear that it is not an overnight weight-loss programme.
She says: “The one question everyone has asked me daily since I lost weight is, ‘How have you done it?’. I tried every faddy diet going and my plan is the only thing that’s worked for me.
“Until I became true to myself and knew what I needed to do, which was everything had to shrink in so many ways, that was the only way I’d get results – and here I am, 12 stone lighter.
“It is just a case of honesty and damn hard work. There is no magic wand. I can’t give you willpower, but I can give you all the advice that 100% works.”
An edited extract from Lisa Riley’s Honesty Diet, by Lisa Riley, published by Michael Joseph at £16.99. Copyright © Lisa Riley 2017.
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