Emmerdale star Gemma Atkinson has hit back at bodyshaming critics and has claimed that she's never been happier or healthier at 11 stone.
Atkinson has revealed that she felt a lot of pressure as a teenager to shed her 'puppy fat'. She was just 15 when she first joined the show and put a lot of pressure on herself to lose weight.
" I was only 15 so I had puppy fat and I was surrounded by all the glamour girls and I just thought I needed to be slim."
Nowadays, Atkinson has traded her weighing scales for the gym and is proud of her strong physique.
"The last time I weighed myself was at the gym and I was eleven stone. I remember telling someone and they couldn't believe I was that weight."
"But I am 5ft 9in tall, have big thighs and I’m broad - from ‘good stock’ as my grandad would say. They just couldn’t believe I was happy being 11st.
"I go on body-fat-to-muscle ratio and how my clothes fit. I don’t have any scales in my house."
Gemma now gets up at the crack of dawn for yoga or an exercise bike session every day and admits that she is 'useless to everybody' unless she trains and eats well.
Gemma said that despite the transformation she still gets insecure, especially about her legs, but that she has learned to love her body.
"When people say, ‘I have got bigger arms, bigger legs or a bigger stomach,’ that’s your body. What you don’t like about your body somebody else will find amazing. Some people think the perfect physique is a body-builder type, some people think it is the hour glass, or a Victoria’s Secret model. There is no perfect body, it is what you make of your own. You can’t change it, so why spend your entire life resenting it?"
Via The Sun