Lorraine Stanley, who played Karen Taylor in EastEnders, has opened up about her 6.5st weight loss

Lorraine Stanley had weight-loss surgery two years ago

EastEnders star Lorraine Stanley has become almost unrecognisable from her character Karen Taylor, the endearing yet perpetually scruffy mum she portrayed on the BBC soap from 2017 to 2024.

The 49-year-old actress has shed an impressive six and a half stone over two years and next month will walk down the aisle after a two-year engagement to her fiancé Mark Perez, with whom she shares daughter, Nancy, nine.

But transforming her body hasn’t all been plain sailing. As well as expressing her excitement about her upcoming wedding, Lorraine has revealed the secrets behind her remarkable weight loss, which was aided by jabs.

“I’m 50 next year and I’m feeling great,” Lorraine told the Mirror. “I looked 20 years older when I was bigger. I certainly felt it anyway… I’ve lost 6½st. I weigh 8st now.

“If you look at my little wrists and ankles, this is the weight I should have been. I should be a thin person. And I always was, until I hit my late twenties.

“I’m not going to lie, nor am I promoting it, but I had weight-loss surgery two years ago. I had a gastric sleeve. I went to Harley Street. I didn’t go to a clinic in Turkey or anything.

“In saying that, I’ve had friends who’ve gone to Turkey and had great experiences, but I didn’t trust that process. So, yeah, I went to a London clinic, paid an awful lot of money and had it done.

“It’s hands-down the best thing I’ve ever done – both for me and for my family.”

Lorraine said she was “missing out on so much” due to her size. She “so big” that she couldn’t chase her daughter up the road or play football with her outside, until the weight loss surgery “changed everything”.

Lorraine said the “lightbulb moment” was when she was watching an episode of EastEnders she was in and she could “barely look at herself”.

“The person on screen was unrecognisable to me,” she said, before explaining her experience with weight-loss injections.

“I’d tried Wegovy before opting for surgery,” the soap star admitted. “I have friends on different weight-loss jabs and they work for them. I’m not against them, but for whatever reason I feel like I got immune to them.

“It got to the point where I was injecting myself and eating at the same time. I was thinking, “What the hell are you doing?” So I decided that was it, time to get this surgery booked.”

Lorraine said she is “healthier, fitter, and [surgery has] changed her mindset for the better”.

“It has been hard, though,” she noted. “You’ve got to work at your portions. You don’t want to overeat as you can stretch the gastric band. And you don’t want to do that as you’ve paid good money for it.

“But for me – and this is totally personal – it’s the best thing I could have done.”

On a potential return to EastEnders, she added: “Maybe – they didn’t kill me off. But right now, I wouldn’t. I’m enjoying Nancy. On EastEnders, I missed a lot of milestones. Now I’m like her personal taxi driver… I’ve gone for a few auditions. I haven’t got anything yet, but I will. And if I don’t, I don’t mind that either. I’m so happy being a mum.”