TV star Tina Malone says people “pussyfoot around” the issue of weight gain.
The actress, who shed more than 12 stone with the help of a gastric band, was speaking after Kelly Brook told how she lost weight after her boyfriend called her a “balloon”.
Malone, 55, told Good Morning Britain her father was honest with her when she attended her first National Television Awards.
“I had a dress on and I said, ‘Do I look fat in this dress?’. And my dad said, ‘Yeah, because you’re fat. You’re going to look fat in every dress’.”
She added: “I don’t think there’s a problem, saying to your partner, ‘For longevity, I love you, I’m worried about you. So you need to lose weight, let’s do it together’. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.”
She said: “I do think we pussyfoot around.”
Malone said of her own weight loss: “I looked like a pig in a frock. But it was my health and my mental health that made me lose weight. I was dying.
“My dad said I looked like an Easter egg and I did. I was like a ball.
“It’s important how you deal with people. I tell my friends, ‘You are looking a bit chunky there. You need to get yourself to the gym. But they’re my friends’.”
Tina Malone: I tell my friends when they look a bit ‘chunky’