LOVE Island star Gabby Allen has always been open about her journey to body confidence.
But now the 31-year-old who appeared on the ITV2 reality show back in 2017, has taken her followers inside her incredible transformation over the last decade, describing in detail how she has finally found contentment.
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The influencer shared some eye popping before and after images, taken ten years apart. In the first photo she is 21, four years before she entered the Love Island villa.
The former dancer told how she spent her early 20s working in a burger bar, which forced her into an unhealthy diet.
She said: “I worked in a burger restaurant for years, literally eating two burgers a day because it was free and left more money for partying.”
Gabby then told how she went travelling, living for a while in Miami, where she ate a “tub of Ben and Jerry’s everyday” before teaching dance in Malaysia.
After eventually finding herself back in the UK, she decided to turn her life around.
She revealed that the “turning point” was her decision to study for her personal trainer qualification.
Learning about fitness and healthy eating made Gabby realise that she needed to unlearn some of the unhealthy habits that had been holding her back for so many years.
She said: “I used to go through a cycle of binge eating and starving. I used to obsessively count and allow myself very low calories, then get so hungry I’d binge on SH***. I used to do fad diets like juice plus and then binge again. I used to go out and drink four bottles of wine, eat a Chinese on the way home, then have a fry up the next day and not move a muscle. I was miserable, I lacked structure, motivation, discipline and drive.”
But now, several years later, Gabby revealed she has got her life back on track.
She said: “Fast forward 7 years I am still a work in progress but I have come a long way. Building strength in my body is the driving force in my life. It makes me feel strong inside and out and I couldn’t do without it.”
Earlier this year Gabby revealed that her experience on Love Island left her feeling so insecure about her body, the opted to go under the knife. But the experience left her with a botched boob job.
She told The Sun’s Fabulous magazine: “”When I was there, I was 25 and fabulous.
“But I still had a meltdown on the show. It was about my boobs. I didn’t directly say that, or maybe I did. But I had no boobs, I just wasn’t naturally well endowed.
“There was a lot of girls on the show that did have lovely big, fake or real boobs.
“And they were all getting loads of dates and I was like, ‘Is it because I haven’t got any boobs or is it just because nobody actually wants me?'”
Gabby, then a 34B, left the show determined to get a boob job.
She says: “But I held off for a few years and that was mainly because I felt like I owed it to the itty bitty committee, to not do it.
“I had so many messages from people saying ‘you give me the confidence’ and ‘I completely feel you’ (with her insecurities) but in the end I felt, I need to do this to make me feel confident.
“Because I knew it would just give me that level up in how I felt about myself.
“And maybe that is because I have deep-rooted self insecurities,” she laughs.
“But it worked. Until it didn’t and my t*ts went wrong and I had to do it all over again.”
Gabby forked out £5,000 for implants from a fancy London clinic, to take her to a 34C.
“Then I ruined them,” she sighed. “I got too excited and went back (to the gym) way too soon.
“My left boob dropped massively and then my right boob dropped as well, but it wasn’t as bad as the left one.
“My left boob was literally facing the ceiling.
“So once again, my confidence was knocked. I was like ‘I’ve paid all this money to get them done, and now I’m back to square one’.
The Liverpool born star is now a DD after travelling to Turkey where she received an excellent standard of care.
She said: “She added: “I had my second boob job done in Turkey, which has a huge stigma around it but my experience was wonderful.
“The same doctor did my mum’s neck lift, and he’s also done a lot of my friends’ surgery.
“Because after my first one, even though it was in London, my aftercare wasn’t there really.
“I was told that I could go to Dubai, literally two weeks afterwards and be in a bikini.
“I’m absolutely thrilled to bits with them now.”
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