Size 10 Milton Keynes beauty salon owner mortified after doctor tells her she's 'obese'

A young woman who runs her own beauty salon has taken to social media to air her horror at being told she is obese.

Regan Ellis, who is 22, wears a UK size 10, is 5ft 7in tall and weighs 11st 12lbs.

She was quite happy with her size – until she came face to face with a BMI-conscious doctor at MK Hospital this summer.

Regan, who owns Signature Studio Aesthetics in Linford Wood, took to her TikTok page to share what happened next with her !09,900 followers.

She said: "I have been humbled in a way that I have never, ever been humbled before."

“So, I went to the doctors and I went to get a blood test result up at the hospital in Milton Keynes and he sits there and before giving me my results goes: 'Regan, you're obese’.

"I went: 'Excuse me?' and he goes: 'On the BMI chart, you're 5ft 7, you are obese, you're on the line of obese'."

Regan said she informed the doctor that she was there for her blood test results and not about her weight.

"He proceeded to tell me how fat I was and I was like: 'Right, ok, brilliant. That's given me a complex and ruined my day’.”

"So then he was like: 'I'm going to give you some weight loss medication, you need to lose two and a half stone before Christmas’.”

The medication Regan was given was Orlistat - a weight loss drug which she describes as “effectively a strong laxative".

After two weeks of suffering with side effects, she gave up and tried an Ozempic pen instead. She says she had to inject herself with this once a week to change her insulin levels.

This resulted in some weight loss. But when Regan went back to the doctor for a check up, she says she was told to lose another 10lbs as she was still overweight.

She said: “At this point I felt a single tear go down my face. I'm not even fat. I'm not fat. I'm a UK size 10, how am I fat? How am I overweight?"

"I’m a bit bigger than what I usually am but it is what it is and I feel like every girl around this age - between 20 and 25 - we put on a bit of weight, it is what it is… It’s relationship weight. Actually it’s Wagamama weight… Chilli chicken rolls weight.”

Social media influencer Regan, who also has 31,600 followers on her Instagram account, has now hit out at the pressure put on young women to comply with official BMI charts.

She is going on holiday to the Caribbean next month and admits she is now worried about how she will look in her bikini.

She said: "What a complex to give a young girl. It's not like we don't feel cr*p about ourselves already. Just let me be happy, let me be who I am."

Her advice to other young women told they are overweight is: “Don’t listen… Go home and forget.”