Ruth Jones turns Cover Girl - Ruth Jones, Ruth Alexandra Elizabeth Jones ,born 22 September 1966 is a Welsh TV actress and writer. She co-starred in and co-wrote the award-winning British TV comedy Gavin & Stacey (2007-2010), and has appeared in many television comedies and dramas, such as Jimmy McGovern's The Street with Timothy Spall (2009), and starring as Hattie Jacques in Hattie for BBC4 (2011) and as Stella in Stella for Sky 1 (2012).
Biography :
Biography :
Born in Bridgend, South Wales. Attended Porthcawl Comprehensive School. Trained at Warwick University (BA in Drama and Theatre Studies) then actor training at Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. Television includes "Fat Friends" (2000) series I, II,III,IV, "Tales from Pleasure Beach" (2001) for BBC1, "Human Remains" (2000) for BBC2. "Nighty Night" (2004) for BBC2. "Saxondale" (2006) for BBC2. Myfanwy in "Little Britain" (2003) series I,II,III. Co-wrote "Gavin & Stacey" (2007) with James Corden. Plays "Nessa" in "Gavin & Stacey" (2007). Film includes East Is East (1999), Emma (1996), Very Annie Mary (2001) and Heartlands (2002). Lives in Cardiff.
She told Woman & Home magazine: ‘At certain points in life it’s easy not to think about what the consequences might be further down the road.
‘But I made an effort to lose weight because I think the problems of obesity are becoming more known now. I was 17 and a half stone. I stopped drinking five years ago, and I stopped smoking around three years ago, so the weight was the next thing.’
Most famous for playing feisty Welsh lass Nessa Jenkins in the BBC hit comedy she co-created with James Corden, Miss Jones added: ‘I’ve always been big but I just felt that it was getting to a really unhealthy level.
‘People have different attitudes if you’re in the public eye. They can say, ‘Yeah, good for her, she embraces her size,’ and you think, ‘Yeah, but it’s not healthy.’
Regardless of how it looks aesthetically, it’s not healthy to have a BMI as high as I did. I wasn’t able to move around.’
The star, whose new comedy Stella launches on Sky One tonight, told how her husband, TV producer David Peet – with whom she runs Tidy Productions - had also lost weight with her.
She said: ‘I’ve lost four and a half stone. The key thing was acceptance and patience – to accept it was going to take a couple of years.
Ruth on the cover of the current edition of Woman & Home magazine
'It’s not going to happen overnight. I wouldn’t judge anyone on how they lose weight, but the only way I was going to do it was to count calories. So I went down to 1,200-1,500 calories a day.
‘It was heartbreaking. There was literally a moment where I thought, ‘Oh my god, I’ve got to eat less food.’ It was more about the portion sizes than anything. I still have blowouts, but I got into the habit of counting calories. If I feel like it, I’ll still eat chocolate, but I’ll be thinking,
‘How many calories am I eating?’
‘I’ve still got a way to go – I’m still two or three stone overweight, according to the charts. I’m in this half-stone zone that I don’t move out of. I’m 13 stone and I’ll go up to 13.7 and back down again. It’s hard to go past it. My husband lost weight with me – again, for health reasons.
Now a size 16, Miss Jones said she did not ‘hide as much’ in baggy clothes.
The best compliment she had received, she said, came was when she was told she was a size 14 by a saleswoman in the Stella McCartney section in department store Selfridges, and laughed: ‘She was wrong, but it felt SO good!’
She said she tried to exercise, and turned to aerobics and running, but in the end realised: ‘walking a bit faster is better than not walking at all.’
