Actress Lisa Riley has revealed the secret behind her ten stone weight-loss - she has been teetotal for the last 12 months.

Former self-confessed party girl Lisa, who celebrates her 40th birthday on Wednesday, ditched her favourite tipple of red wine and says she can not imagine going back.

Lisa, who starred as Mandy Dingle in Emmerdale has dropped from a from a size 30 to a 14-16 thanks to the self-imposed booze ban as well as a major change in her diet.

She has swapped her veggie sausage breakfast, creamy pasta lunch and big potato-laden dinner for lighter meals of fruit, yoghurt, salmon, soup and salad, and cutting the crisps and crumpets she used to snack on in favour of healthier fruit and nuts.

The actress said: “I realised there were lots of empty calories in booze so that is why I gave it up,” she says. “If you add up through the week what I’d consume in alcohol calories it was mad.

Lisa Riley says she hasn't drunk alcohol for 12 months

“I used to come off stage and think I needed a drink to wind down, so that’d be maybe three bottles over the week.

“Then if I went out at the weekend with friends, and maybe did a Sunday lunch with my family, there’d be another few bottles there. It all added up.

“I never intended to become teetotal. All my girlfriends gave up booze for nine months while they were pregnant, so I thought I’d do nine months, but it’s nearly a year now and I don’t even want a drink.”

Lisa in May, 2014
Lisa Riley models her Just Be You Range

And as well as the booze and diet changes, Lisa is now also at the gym by 7am.

Lisa added: “I was the ultimate party girl.

“I was always first to the bar and last to leave. I’d always send the first cab away. I could put away the drink and I loved it.

“But now I don’t find the fact that I don’t drink weird, it is everybody else who does. People say, ‘Oh go on, just have one’. Why? I don’t need to. I like myself so much more for not drinking.

“I do have regrets from my drinking days – the fear I had upset somebody, the jigsaw morning when you’re trying to put together what happened the night before.

“I don’t miss any of that. Now instead of partying until 6.45am, I’m in the gym at 6.45am.”