Corrie’s new star Jodie Prenger says she has given up dieting after fluctuating all her life

As Jodie Prenger lands the role of her life in Coronation Street, the star has revealed she has given up dieting for good.  

The reality star, who shot to fame on the BBC programme I’d Do Anything, has fluctuated from a size 12 to a size 26 over the years.

But she has now decided ‘life is too short to wotty about it’ and has vowed never to diet again. 

Joining the cobbles this week as Glenda Shuttleworth, Jodie, 43, said: ‘My weight has been up and down like a bride’s nightie. Sometimes I’m alright with it and other times I’m not.

‘But I always think, “God, I wish I was as big as I was the first time I thought I was big”, you know?’.

Jodie told The Sun she enjoys exercising, but also going out and having fun with her friends.

She confessed she has a Peloton bike at home but joked it has become a hanger for her dressing gown since she bought it. 

Jodie in her slimmer days in 2009. The same year she appeared on The Paul O’Grady Show and admitted she lost too much weight in 2006

Jodie, who is from Blackpool and currently lives in Lancashire, won Sky Living’s weight loss show The Biggest Loser in 2006 and bagged a £25,000 prize for her transformation.

In six months she lost 8.5st, going from 18st 2lb to 9st 9lbs and from a size 26 to 12. She even released a weight loss DVD off the back of her success.

But she admitted she found the lifestyle impossible to keep up once the show had finished and her weight has fluctuated ever since. 

Jodie’s fitness DVD, Jodie Prenger Fitness Blasts, came out in January 2014 and says Jodie was to get fit again with the help of concise fitness regimes

She added: ‘What that show did was teach me a lot about exercise and I enjoyed the process because we did it as a group. But it wasn’t realistic because they put you in a house and you did nothing else but that, so when real life comes in again, it’s not sustainable.’

In 2009 she was a guest on The Paul O’Grady Show and she spoke openly about her time on The Biggest Loser. 

Looking at a photo of herself after the weight loss, she said she believed she lost too much weight and became too thin. She added: ‘All women should have curves.’

Jodie has always enjoyed an event over the years, and has been photographed slimmer and fuller-figured. But now she says ‘life is too short’

In 2008, Jodie found fame when she won the BBC Talent show ‘I’d do Anything’ and went on to play Nancy in Oliver in the West End. At the time judges on the show Andrew Lloyd Webber called her the ‘People’s Nancy’.

She went on to have a hugely successful theatre career playing Miss Hannigan in Annie and appearing in One Man, Two Guvnors at the Haymarket Theatre in London.

She took on the title role in the UK theatre tour of Shirley Valentine and more recently she played the lead role of Kelly in the world premiere of Kay Mellor’s Fat Friends the musical.

This week she appeared on ITV’s Loose Woman as her role in Coronation Street airs and she sees her character make her grand entrance onto the cobbles

Jodie, who got engaged to boyfriend and businessman Simon, 48, in 2012 after her father died of kidney cancer, also starred as Helen in the National Theatre Production of A Taste of Honey, a performance inspired by watching early episodes of Coronation Street.

This week she makes her debut on Coronation Street and fulfills a lifelong dream of bagging a starring role in the soap. 

She said her character will fit right into Corrie’s tradition of ‘Northern powerhouse women’.

Jodie added: ‘Oh, she’s a whirlwind. She’s bold, she’s funny and as for her choice in clothes, they’ll be on the Paris catwalks next year. I see a lot of my nan in Glenda.

‘My nan could play the part better than me, to be honest.’