- 07:00, 4 OCT 2022
Brooke Vincent has undergone a body transformation, telling OK! how she wanted to “reclaim her identity beyond motherhood” as she turned 30.
The former Coronation Street star recruited a personal trainer and has been doing gym sessions every Monday and Friday, while her sons Mexx, two, and Monroe, 16 months, are at nursery. The schedule means she starts the week with some much-needed me-time and she now has a new sense of confidence.
Posing in an orange bikini beside the pool, Brooke says she has learned to love her stretch marks and sees them as a reminder of bringing her beloved boys into the world.
She said: “I’ve got stretch marks from having the boys – I’ve got them on my stomach and legs. I already had them on my bum. They came on at the final two weeks of my first pregnancy, then I got more with Monroe.
“Some people are so worried about showing or even saying they’ve got stretch marks, but I’ve accepted they’re my new body now. There’s nothing I can do about them and I got them from my babies, so that’s pretty cool.”
See all the photos from her stunning photoshoot here…
Brooke boldly left her career-defining role as Sophie Webster in Coronation Street to focus on family life in 2019 and has put all of her being into bringing up Mexx, two, and 16-month-old Monroe ever since. But on our shoot, the actress is intent on marking a new chapter – one where she is reclaiming her identity beyond motherhood and focusing on herself. She said: "Since becoming a mum, I’ve been on the backburner. I want to get myself back.”
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The mum of two is back in her old jeans after recruiting a personal trainer and says she had a newfound confidence after being plagued with insecurities in her 20s. She said: "I’m at a point where if I want to wear something, I’m going to wear it. I used to dress in oversized stuff and was so cautious of what other people thought. “I don’t know where I’ve got this newfound confidence from but I’ll wear dresses and tight skirts because that’s what I like."
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Brooke’s journey of rediscovering herself comes after a roller-coaster few years facing the challenges of adjusting to parenting two children. Opening up about the transition, she admitted: "I found the transition from one baby to two really hard and I’m not going to sugar-coat it. It can be really hard to make sure you’re still getting a bit of you while you’re giving everything.”
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Brooke announced her engagement to West Brom footballer Kean Bryan in April and shared the romantic details of his proposal with OK!. She said: "We were celebrating our six-year anniversary and when we came back home there was an igloo in the garden and it was all beautifully decorated. We had dinner, which was lasagne made by a hired chef. It was really luxurious. Then I went upstairs and when I came back into the igloo he was down on one knee and I thought, ‘Oh my god!’."
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Two-year-old Mexx is already following in his father’s footballing footsteps, with Brooke revealing: “Mexx goes to football class on a Saturday where he practises – my youngest is showing an ability as well. He started walking at 10 months old and he can throw a ball in the air and kick it. He can dribble a ball… he was one in May!”
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Lovingly, she joked that her boys are "both nuisances", adding: “My life is like a circus! It’s chaos day in, day out. They make me laugh – they have that love/hate relationship where they’re both cuddly and then if one of them has something, the other wants it. Rough and tumble all the time. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
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The actress has been getting parenting and relationship advice from her former on-screen sister Helen Flanagan, who is also dating a footballer. She told: “I speak to Helen a lot. It’s hard to get playdates in, she lives 40 to 50 minutes away from me, but I speak to her all the time. We talk about parenting and kids being chaos. Her kids have the same age gap as mine. There’s a lot of resemblance, and Scott [Sinclair] plays football, so it’s very much like we’re in the same boat.”
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Opening up about her decision to leave Coronation Street after 18 years, Brooke explained: “The hard thing about Corrie was that the hours aren’t a normal nine-to-five, or you couldn’t go part-time, or you couldn’t start after 10am. There was physically no way that I could do it without having a nanny. I didn’t want that to affect my time with my first baby. I thought while I was able to step away, I did, and I felt that was the best decision for me and my family at the time.”
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She’s only been engaged to West Bromwich Albion footballer Kean Bryan, 25, for five months and she confesses they almost got married in secret while on holiday on a Greek island in June. She said: "When we were in Santorini for my 30th birthday I literally said to Kean, ‘There’s a little chapel in our hotel, let’s go and get married now.’ I was like, ‘Come on!’ I think if we had the boys with us and our immediate family we wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. I’d go to the town hall and marry him tomorrow.”
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