Former Coronation Street star Catherine Tyldesley is currently dancing her way into our hearts on Strictly Come Dancing. Seeing her in her fabulous bedazzled dresses, it's easy to see that she is gorgeous and confident - but the 36-year-old hasn't always been so confident in her own skin.
MORE: Catherine Tyldesley and husband reminisce about wedding dance ahead of Strictly show
The mum-of-two has made no secret that, as a teenager, she weighed 95kg and wore size 22 clothes. Since joining Strictly, the successful actress has opened up about how the BBC dance show has helped her with her insecurities about. In an interview with the Daily Star, she revealed: "Within an hour of the first day, I was thinking, ‘I don’t care what I look like, I’m just going for it, I’m a sweaty mess, I’m jiggling around all over the show', but you’ve just got to go for it."
Catherine admitted that she had always wanted to learn to dance but her size had prevented her from pursuing the dream: "I was terrified of it. I was much bigger, so I didn't have the confidence… Doing this show is a huge thing for me, but at the same time it’s liberating." Catherine also revealed on Loose Women that she would have considered a gastric band as a teenager due to her size but encouraged that it was about creating a healthy lifestyle: “If you want to sustain a healthy weight and feel good about yourself then you need to fuel your body with the right food.”
Back in 2018, the Coronation Street actress posted her impressive results from a 12-week fitness programme to her Instagram account. During the programme, Catherine slimmed down to a healthy size 8 through weight training. Yet, she has admitted that this has made her Strictly training no easier: "I've done weight training before, with slow controlled movements, but the group dance routine we've been learning... I thought I was relatively fit, but no."
During her 12-week training, which she did with Ultimate Performance Fitness in Manchester, attended by the likes of Gemma Atkinson. The actress spoke out about how the programme not only helped her to gain confidence - and impressive abs - but the plan also helped her to learn more about nutrition, developing habits she wanted to pass on to her son Alfie. But Catherine hasn't stopped at just passing down her nutritional tips to her son. Due to ditching fad diets in favour of a nutritious balanced diet, as a result, Catherine now is quite the whizz in the kitchen and can always be found posting her own delicious healthy recipes to her Instgram feed - with everything from healthy pancake recipes to noodle, meatball even healthy chicken nugget recipes.
During her 12-week programme, she revealed a typical day of eating would have seen her eat an omelette with wilted spinach, tomatoes and mushrooms for breakfast, and prawns or tuna with broccoli and four brazil nuts after training. Lunch could have been a chicken and avocado salad with grilled asparagus, while blueberries or an apple serve as a healthy afternoon snack. Homemade steak burgers with aubergine fries offer a lighter alternative to chips for dinner, and if Catherine fancied a sweet treat, she'd mix some Chocotrients superfood formula into a coconut yoghurt.
OTHER: Catherine Tyldesley reveals how she copes with Strictly nerves ahead of first live show
