CAROLYN HARRIS MP: I LOST 10ST ON FAT JABS. NOW I DANCE AND LIFT WEIGHTS
For Carolyn Harris MP, the trigger for her recent, dramatic 10st weight loss wasn’t concern about her health, nor being unable to fit into the clothes she wanted to wear. It was social-media abuse. “I was sick of people calling me fat,” says the 65-year-old deputy leader of Welsh Labour, who first arrived in the House of Commons in 2015. “It was completely destroying my confidence.”
The problem was, she says, that she “didn’t have much confidence to begin with. I wore bright clothes that would give the impression that I was bubbly and light-hearted, but that was just a barrier, my mask. After losing my son, putting up a barrier was the only thing allowing me to think: ‘I’ve got this; I can keep doing this’,” says Harris, whose eight-year-old son, Martin, was tragically run over and killed in a traffic accident in 1989. “But the trolls were breaking through that barrier, saying I looked like a clown or a man in drag, that my clothes were too bright, or talking about how fat I was.”
For a while Harris – known for her trademark purple pixie crop, statement specs and flamboyant style – tried to ignore the abuse, but it became relentless. “I was an easy target because I was bigger. It was all negative and I was afraid that if I allowed them to continue they would destroy me,” she explains. “I worried my mental health would be completely destroyed, and it’s fragile.”
However, there was still a gulf between knowing she wanted to try weight-loss injections and verbalising that thought to a doctor. “I’m just a coward. I couldn’t even use the word obese, so having that conversation was too hard,” she explains. “It was an admission of weakness, in my mind, and recognition that this person that I was, wasn’t really the person I wanted to be.”
In October 2024, Harris finally found the motivation she needed to make a change. “It was International Menopause Day, so we were doing a mile-long ‘walk and talk’ event for women in Swansea. I only managed a quarter of the way and I couldn’t go any further because my back was too bad. I knew it was time.”
A ‘chubby’ childhood
Growing up in Swansea, Harris was, in her own words, a “chubby kid”. “I remember my mother going on fad diets – the sort that told you to have an orange after every meal or eat loads of cottage cheese,” she recalls. “I lost weight in my teens, but Mum and I would put it on, lose it, then put it on again. By the time I was in my 40s I’d had three children and accepted that I was a bigger woman. Then, during menopause, I gained more [weight] again.”
Snacking in the evenings became a problem, too. “Once I had my pyjamas on, that was the danger time,” says Harris. “I could sit in bed and have three Mars bars and two packets of crisps while reading a book. I couldn’t have one biscuit – it would be the whole packet. If I’d been on the go, I might not have had anything to eat all day, but once my mind wasn’t busy, that’s when the food noise really started.”
Constant access to food in Westminster also contributed to her weight creeping up. “I wouldn’t say the food was always nice, but it was always available,” she says. “I’ve never been a breakfast person, so by 11am I’d find myself popping to the tea room to grab crisps or a bar of chocolate. When lunch came, I liked ‘nursery food’ – mashed potato, bread and butter pudding, that sort of thing.
“I wasn’t greedy, but I’d always have a pudding; I was more likely to eat dessert than a starter. While having a cup of tea in the afternoon, I’d think: ‘Ooh, I could have a scone and cream now’ – but I wouldn’t have one, I’d have two.”
Turning to medication
At her heaviest, Harris wore a size 26 and estimates she hit around 20st, though she avoided the scales. “Size 18 was the smallest I’d ever worn as an adult. I never thought there was a thin person in there to find, that’s the God’s honest truth. So, during that first conversation I had with my doctor, when she asked: ‘What’s your target?’, I said that if I could be a size 16, I would be over the moon. That would make me average – and that’d be enough for me.”
Once the decision was made and the prescription was written, the weight began to drop off almost immediately. “Medication kicks in for me before I’ve even taken it,” exclaims Harris. “The minute I knew I had that prescription, I didn’t want to eat. I was at a breakfast event the day I was due to start the injections and there were beautiful croissants, which had always been a weakness for me, but I remember thinking: ‘Oh, I don’t want one of them.’”
In fact, the weight fell off so quickly, it took Harris time to mentally catch up with her thinner self. “I was getting a bad back and couldn’t work out why. Finally I thought perhaps it was to do with my bra, so I went for a fitting. I was wearing [a size] 44DD, but suddenly I was a 36. My back was bad because I didn’t have any support, so my bust was constantly weighing me down. I invested in new bras and the bad back went.”
While out shopping in April 2025, Harris said she saw “some lovely sparkly trousers and picked up, I thought optimistically, a size 18. My friend said: ‘There’s no way they will fit you!’ Well, I was a little bit disheartened because I thought she meant they would be too small, but she handed me a 16 and they were too big. From that moment on, I started changing my wardrobe, buying size 14, wearing more close-fitting clothes. That’s when people really started noticing. Constituents would say: ‘Is that you?’ By February this year, I was a size 10.”
Taking Mounjaro has completely turned off the food noise that plagued Harris’s evenings. “I still get a bit of it, but now if I crave chocolate I’ll only have one square, not a whole bar. I eat, but I’m more sensible and don’t want as much. The injections have changed my palate, so I’m more likely to crave dried fruit than chocolate. I tend to go for more crunchy food now, like celery. I could eat apples until the cows come home.
“Sometimes I forget to eat completely. I’ll lie in bed and try to work out my calories for the day, and think: ‘Christ, I’d better have something to eat!’ The other night I realised I’d under-eaten hugely because I’d done a 20-minute workout at home, then come up to Westminster and walked 14,000 steps without stopping. I had to get up and have a yogurt.”
Rediscovering the gym
Those 20-minute workouts are a whole new experience for the MP for Neath and Swansea East, who began taking her fitness more seriously last summer. “I’ve been a member of the gym for about 20 years, but I’d go years without stepping foot inside the door,” she admits. “I paid lip service to it really. [I’d go] once every couple of months and almost always to a dance class or, when I was bigger, a rare aqua aerobics session because I’d be hidden in the water.
“Once I’d dropped down a bit, I started going out for walks and back to my aqua class,” she says. “Then I got a little bit braver, got out of the water and did Zumba aerobics.”
Knowing that significant weight loss could lead to muscle loss, Harris began lifting weights earlier this spring, too, and has since surprised herself with how much she has taken to feeling the burn. “I’ve really upped my game over the past few months and now work out every Sunday morning, doing core work and lifting kettlebells with a personal trainer at my gym. Three times a week I do it on my own at home, too,” she says.
“I start with 5kg kettlebells and work my way down 1kg at a time. Your arms are killing you by the time you get to the 1kg ones, but I want to work out now – that’s the difference. I definitely feel better after I’ve done it, too. I’m beginning to see more definition in my muscles, and there’s a real sense of achievement,” she adds.
Harris also does a dance class every day when she’s at home in Wales. “To make up for missing it when I’m in London, I will find the longest way home or around the building, and walk up and down the stairs to my office on the sixth floor, instead of taking elevators.
“There’s no feeling better than knowing you can walk anywhere, do anything, you’re not restricted. I’m capable of so much more than I thought I was.”
A size 12 since March (“I did go down to a 10, but you build muscles when you do weights, so probably I’m a little bit broader now”), Harris has stopped losing weight and moved onto a very low dose of Mounjaro to keep the food noise away. “As long as it’s permissible for me to take it as maintenance, I will do so,” she says.
As for the trolls, “they don’t go away, but I don’t look at social media now,” she says. “They still say dreadful things and I still get emails telling me to lose weight, but now I just say: ‘Oh, well done, thank you. You’ve given me my motivation.’”
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