'Coronation Street' Legend, 62, Unveils Simple Trick That Helped Her Lose 3 Stone — Photos

A beloved British soap actress has undergone a jaw-dropping transformation — and the photos documenting her journey are something you truly need to scroll down to see for yourself.

Sue Cleaver, best known for playing Eileen Grimshaw on "Coronation Street" for nearly two decades, has lost an impressive three stone and dropped two dress sizes — but it is the story behind how she did it that has left fans genuinely stunned.

Cleaver's journey did not begin with a desire to look a certain way. In 2011, she gave her co-stars a serious fright when she collapsed on the set of "Coronation Street". It was later determined that she had suffered an episode brought on by Type 2 Diabetes — a diagnosis that forced her to take a long, hard look at her lifestyle.

Managing the condition required Cleaver to maintain stable blood sugar levels through both diet and exercise. That meant cutting out foods with a high sugar content and overhauling her daily habits entirely. What followed was a gradual but remarkable transformation that would take years to fully unfold.

One of the biggest turning points came when Cleaver, a self-confessed foodie, adopted the Mediterranean diet. Rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, seafood, nuts, legumes and olive oil, the diet is widely celebrated for its health benefits — and for Cleaver, it proved to be genuinely life-changing.

By committing to cleaner eating and cutting back on over-indulgence, which she openly admitted had been her Achilles heel, she dropped from a UK size 16 to a size 12, shedding three stone in the process.

But diet was only part of the picture.

Perhaps the most surprising element of Cleaver's transformation was the role that alcohol played. During the pandemic, she admitted to overdoing the red wine — drinking several glasses across four or five evenings a week without fully registering the calorie impact.

"I know it sounds ridiculous at my age, but I never really thought about how many calories I was consuming when I was having a glass of red wine while cooking dinner and then a couple more while eating it," she said. "If you're doing that four or five nights a week, that's a lot of calories."

She did Dry January and found the results so compelling that she decided to give up alcohol altogether. In doing so, she shed a stone and a half before even entering the Australian jungle for the 2022 series of "I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!" — where she went on to lose a further 18 pounds on the show's famously spartan rations of around 700 calories a day.

Cleaver also credited hormone replacement therapy as a significant factor in her renewed energy and wellbeing. She began HRT roughly a year and a half before speaking publicly about it and was candid about how much she wished she had started sooner.

"I went on HRT about a year and a half ago and realised I should have done that about five years ago," she said. "I was walking around in a bit of a fog and then I literally made some massive changes."

The shift in energy and clarity, she suggested, was what made the other lifestyle changes feel manageable. She described the experience as feeling like a completely different person — one with far more drive and vitality than before.

Despite the visible results, Cleaver has been vocal about refusing to let her transformation be used as a commercial tool. When diet companies began circulating her image without consent — falsely claiming she had lost weight using keto gummies — she took to Instagram to alert her followers to the scam.

"There is obviously some scam going around saying that I lost weight using keto gummies," she told her followers. "It's [expletive]. It's a scam. And if you've been taken in by it, I am so, so sorry."

She has also spoken candidly about the unfair pressures placed on women regarding their bodies, stating firmly that she would never promote any weight-related product.

"There's always going to be outside pressure and unfair expectations placed on women, but I refuse to get pulled into it," she said. "Let's just let women be women — we have enough difficulties and struggles as it is."

The reaction from fans who have followed Cleaver's journey has been overwhelmingly warm. Comments have poured in from people who barely recognised her at first glance, with many praising not just her appearance but her openness and authenticity throughout the process.

"Omg you look like another person until I zoomed in on your face. I'm amazed — well done, you look absolutely amazing gorgeous girl🥰," wrote one fan. Others noted how much younger she looked, and how rare it is to see a celebrity lose weight without crediting a branded product or paid programme.

"She loves oks so much younger too [sic]," gushed another admirer. "Looking great. Seems to have had a real makeover," said a third, while another added, "She looks great — loosing weight is one thing but keeping it off long term is not an easy task."

Cleaver's story is ultimately not about an extreme diet or a quick fix. It is about a woman who faced a serious health diagnosis, made slow and steady changes, and refused to let the media or commercial interests define what her journey meant.

Scroll down to see the photos chronicling her transformation through the years.

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