The pop princess laughs off claims she’s taken her weight-loss too far.
Last week, pictures of Ricki-Lee Coulter looking drawn and super skinny sparked a social-media frenzy. “You are losing too much weight, not looking like the old Ricki we all fell in love with,” wrote one fan.
But Ricki-Lee, 27, has hit back. “I wasn’t always 30kg heavier – that is what people forget,” she tells The Sun-Herald. “I put that weight on after my divorce. I ate to comfort myself.”
The singer’s willowy frame has fans labelling her “scary skinny” but she insists she falls within a healthy weight range for her 173cm height. “I have always been a curvy girl… and I’ve never let the stereotype of what a pop star should be ever control me,” she says. “The decision to get fit and lose weight was not to fit that stereotype.”
Ricki-Lee’s figure has made headlines for years. As recently as 2010 she was a poster-girl for curvy women, even fronting a campaign for a shapewear label. “I’m not ashamed of showing my curves to the world,” she told Woman’s Day in January 2010. But soon she’d dropped three dress sizes, and since falling in love with personal trainer Richard Harrison, 32, Ricki-Lee has cut out “heavy food” and embraced exercise.
Read more about Ricki-Lee’s weight loss in this Woman’s Day on sale Monday March 25, 2013.