I thought I needed a “life bitch”

... I assumed that would be Steve Miller.

I figured my ample figure doesn’t need the softly-softly approach to losing weight and getting myself back on track.

I need some tough love, and I hoped Stevie boy could be the one to do it.

He doesn’t come cheap though – you can book a £120 session with him where he’ll tell you in no uncertain terms how to Get Off Your Arse and Lose Weight.

That snappy attitude is also the title of his book so, cheap skate that I am – £120 can buy you a lot of pizza you know – I bought that instead.

Well, I know what’s in my book, copies of which are doubling as door stops around Wales this Christmas if I’m lucky.

And I didn’t lose any weight writing that beauty. (Sorry, I should have prefaced that as a spoiler alert as I’ve told you the ending before you’ve even picked it up. But patience, along with calorie counting, has never been a virtue of mine. I wrote a diet book. I’m still fat. The End. Hilarious! Or at least it should be. . .)

So in the same way that I alternated between Slimming World and Weight Watchers with the Atkins and Abject Misery, I decided to give the Life Bitch and his book, which is filled with what he bills as “straight talking advice on how to get thin”, a go.

But, oh dear, 33 pages in and I want to slap him. Hard enough to knock some sense into his blond little head.

I don’t know about you, but I’m loathe to take advice from some thin bloke whose idea of “tough love” or “straight talking” is to make you feel like being the F word is the ultimate sin.

It’s like going to see a slim nutritionist who tells you “to use a smaller plate, eat smaller portions, think small and you’ll be small”. Hello?!?

I’ve seen about four of the bright sparks now.

If it only was as simple as eating less and moving more, none of us would have a weight issue.

But our fat life, unlike the best kind of carbs, is more complex than that.

One man who wants to simplify the big issue of being big is the Life Bitch, a man who claims to know what it’s like to be big and be burdened by it.

He professes to know how it feels because he went up to a 36ins waist.

I DREAM of having a 36ins waist! But, kindly soul that I am, I decided to give the Gordon Ramsay of lifestyle gurus a shot.

All was going well until I started to read the book which, wen you’re following a book about diets, kind of defeats the object.

I’m only a few pages in, if truth be told, and I may change my mind about the Life Bitch – but to do that I need to pick up my (artery clogged?) heart up off the floor, look at myself in the mirror and tell her that “It’s okay to be fat as long as you remember that you’re not going to live as long as your slim and healthy friends and relations.”

I’ll follow that with a thigh rubbing, “It’s okay to be fat unless you want to be able to lead a full, active life and play with your children and grandchildren.”

Shall I carry on? Okay Han, shoulders back, head up, stomach and love handles out, “It’s okay to be fat, but remember it’s the slim and healthy people who pay for your treatment when your health fails. Why should we pay for your lack of self-control?”

Deep breaths now, hoist up those Spaniel’s ears and remember, “You know it’s not okay to be fat when every time you look in the mirror someone you vaguely remember as being you when you were slim says, ‘Let me out you fat f*****. I’ve had enough.’

“Listen to your inner voice.”

And there I was, just going to tell myself how nice my hair was today. How wrong a girl can be.

I’d like to sit with – not on (just yet) – the Life Bitch and explain to him, in sensible language, talk which comes from someone with brains but whose IQ is shoe sized when it comes to figuring out how to either get smaller or fully accepting of how I am right this minute, what it feels like to be your own worst enemy in the battle of the bulge.

To suggest, even for a second, that by “doing nothing in life, you will be nothing in life” is a motivational statement, is like saying that big = inconsequential = nothing = worthless. That all us big birds are “mistakenly stuffing themselves stupid and guzzling alcohol to feel some positive emotions”.

But the Life Bitch apparently knows better because he prefers to “inspire” his clients with vibrant motivation, applications of professional clinical hypnosis, “no-nonsense tough love and humour”.

Steve believes in “the power of laughter as this is conducive to personal change”.

I for one, this useless waste of space, drain on society, lazy good for nothing lumper that I obviously am in his mind, am not laughing.

And if there’s one thing my belly is good at, it’s being joyful when my mind is at ease with itself.

I’m going to read the rest of the book though, give it a chance like that time I did the cabbage soup diet despite knowing I can’t stand veg or the Slim Fat when milk was making me itch.

I’ll chew it over.

I’m good at that.

But this one and only time, I may think twice about swallowing.

CHRISTMAS is coming ..

... and the goose isn’t the only thing that’s getting fat. Well, fatter at any rate.

I’ve stopped going to the gym – but am still paying the monthly subscription “just in case” – and the last time I went to Fat School I celebrated a 4lb weight loss with chicken fried rice and two low-fat yoghurts.

Then, three weeks ago, I started being good once again, flitting from defeat to determination with the petulant swing of the moon. Two days past, I started to slide.

Now, with Christmas around the corner, I’m at another impasse.

I’m wondering, with the kind of intensity treatises are made and broken I’m sure, if I should bother being good this side of the 25th of Indulgence.

The problem with putting the good life on hold is that you – or at least weak-willed me – tend to eat for Wales during the break from calorie-counting, points-tallying, fat-weighing, carb-avoiding tactics.

Last year, as you may recall, I was on my way to having lost a whopping, eye-lash skimming (because that’s the only place I thought I could see it had gone off) two stone.

And then came The Break.

Significant (Thin But Getting Fat ‘Cos He’s Content Now) Other took me to London for a mini break.

For months I’d been weight-droppingly good, minding my calories like a nervous first-time mother of a screaming newborn, so I decided in my lack of wisdom to just act “normally” during my few days away.

Just enjoy yourself, he said. But be sensible, he said. You just need to behave “normally”, he said.

And, to quote pencil skirt-wearing Rizzo from Grease, it really was the worst thing I could do, following that sound advice.

I can’t, you see, do “normal”. Well I can, but if I do I just put on weight because normality doesn’t equate to moderation to me.

Fat and its uglier sister defeatism attacks me like it’s never seen me before, as opposed to being attached to me since I came out kicking and screaming and asking for solids before I could gurgle “more” coherently.

As soon as I take a break from calorie crunching, I put on weight. And not just a pound here or there – I’m talking half stone rather than half measures.

A year ago I’m weighing in at nearly two stone lighter – 12 months on and I’m just 5lbs lighter than when I started.

Go on, have a read of that fat fast fact again. I’m only 5lbs lighter after all that work and denial. But bloody hell, it felt good when I was being good.

To get where I am today, though, I’ve just been blind to calories and led, as far as I can see it, a normal life.

Now I maybe a bit dim to the intricacies of logic, but even I can see what’s gone wrong there.

So as the build-up to Christmas gains momentum, it’s filled with problems for me.

Should I eat, drink and be merry with the rest of the world or should I tape my mouth up and make a sacrificial pyre out of the three Advent calendars I’ve left unopened in the house?

Today I could open the lot while musing on my decision.

Well, ’tis the season to be jolly after all (but not one to be mistaken for a grumpy Mamma Claus with more chin hair, I remind myself while chomping).

YESTERDAY was my birthday.

I turned 36, 4lb lighter than when I was 35. I am, however, about four stone heavier than when I was 26, but there’s 14lb less of me than 18 months ago.

Numbers, don’t you just hate them?

I did, however, rejoice at losing said 4lb when I went back to Fat Club last week.

God knows how I did it, but back to the usual round of not mixing up carbs and proteins I went, kicking and screaming into a routine which is, let’s face it, one big exercise in denying myself stuff.

Creamy stuff. Tomato-based stuff. Stuff with burned crusts on the edges and cheesy fillings. Stuff that’s easy to make or grab on the go. Stuff that I love but which in turn hates my figure.

I was spurred on for the 765th time in my dieting life by the amazing news that Mam Jones is only 2lb away from shedding a whopping/amazing/jealousy-inducing five stones.

It’s taken her 16 months and it’s been difficult sometimes and hunger-inducing all the time.

She doesn’t like me spilling the fat-free beans on her though, so I won’t go into details about what she does (two pieces of Thin-See-Ya bread a month and good carb-busting things like that) or doesn’t do (eat much).

All I can say is she’s winning the numbers game and has started doing that thing all biggies who turn into slimmies do – and that’s start to really take pride in herself.

She does her hair every morning, is never without make-up now and, crucially, loves to shop FOR HERSELF (not just mammoth smalls for me and wide-fitting slippers for my father).

She’s always been lovely looking – and I am saying that without the aid of bias or clever cameras and muted lighting – but for years she’s been big.

But now she’s the incredible – in more ways than one – shrinking woman, and she’s putting me to shame.

As such, I’ve gone back to Fat Club to supplement my gym membership, which is going rusty.

Well, it’s cold at night, isn’t it? Then again, I’m sure I’d convince myself in a heatwave that it was too hot to go.

So it’s “back on it”, as the biggest loser of them all at Fat Club calls resuming calorie counting and what I deem hell.

What’s even more hellish, however, is that the HQ of Deluded Porkers FC is in the smell line of a Chinese takeaway up the road.

So, like some fatter Bisto kid, you float in on an aura of denial mixed with hope, buoyed by an ocean of chicken chow mein THAT YOU CAN’T HAVE.

The weight loss made up for it until I got home and realised all I could have to eat was an omelette with 42g of mozzarella (precisely) cheese and three thin slices of corned beef, while the skinny blokes in the house had chicken pie and cauliflower cheese.

Then, to add insult to my injurious cellulite, as I was nibbling Trinny & Susannah came on the telly to discuss body shapes. The style experts, who are both a size 10 – bitches – maintain that whatever your size, you always fit into one of 12 body shapes, and they aim to show women how to dress to flatter.

The golden dozen are broken down into four main groups – apple, hourglass, triangle and pear.

So there I was, watching a masterclass on shapes with Hiya Love and Significant (thin, but getting a bit of belly) Other when we set about finding out which shape yours truly was.

“You’re a cello,” piped up Hiya Love, who was once a fashion expert (well, he worked in Principles and Wallis on the shoes).

“Nah, she’s a papple,” argued S(t)O. “It’s not an apple and not quite a pear, but a mixture of the two – belly, bum, boobs, a waist, nice and tall with big hair.”

To say I was gutted was an understatement, cello-looking papple that I am. But at least I wasn’t a full-on pear, brick, peach or skittle. And thank God I’m not a cornet or lollipop.

The way I’m feeling today, I fear I might be arrested for licking myself.

I’ve joined a gym ...

... anyone fainted?

It’s a proper gym too, not just a FisherPrice one – full of big hunks and weights, iron-clad machinery, women with pert boobs who manage to stay firm-bottomed and perfect while sweating, loud music and the smell of exhausting under every bouncy black mat.

And then there’s me in the midst of it all, not so much a fish out of water but the token fattie in a room full of pecked perfection.

I’ve only been signed up for a week, but I’ve been thinking about going for ages.

I do lots of thinking, me; housemate Hiya Love says I could think for Wales, think for Britain, think myself out of doing anything constructive while lying supine on the settee with the cat on my lap.

I’ve also given up the fags, my mentholated peacemakers in rows of 20.

But that wasn’t much of a hardship as I’ve always been an “associated” smoker rather than a social one or someone who craved a hit.

When I’m relaxed I have a cup of tea, so I’d always add two cigarettes with my three sugars.

Lunchtimes it’s coffee time, sat on the roof of the coffee shop during my lunch hour, kicking back with a short skinny latte and maybe three breaths of death.

So I’ve stopped drinking tea and coffee and going over the coffee shop at lunch time.

I’ve amended my behaviour in order to kick the habit.

Proud of me? I’m slightly pleased with myself, but although I don’t have any cravings – told you I wasn’t addicted – I know I’m only one crisis away from smoky treat, a good mood away from a celebratory puff.

But as off today, I’m off the fags and I’m going to the gym.

It took some doing, getting me to sign up for the latter. As I said, the idea had been ruminating in my noodle for some time – I’d even gone so far as to look around it before handing over my credit card.

I walked away with the joining form and mulled it over while in Pizza Hut. Yes, Pizza Hut.

While there, eating three slices of the Chicken Supreme (that tight sod otherwise known as my Significant (thin) Other ordered and we had a medium BETWEEN THE TWO OF US) I scoured the small print to see if I could find something which could make me wiggle my way out of it.

And there it was – I was obliged to stay for the year, despite some ditsy bugger with a washboard belly telling me otherwise when I went in for the scout around.

“No you can leave any time,” she said. “But would you want to? Don’t you really want to commit? Because as the song says, if you’re wise you’ll exercise all the fat off.”

I don’t know what song she was referring to, but I don’t think that line was in the chorus of Food, Glorious Food.

Since then, you’ll be pleased to know, I’ve managed to convince myself that doing a bit of exercise, whatever the level, will do me good.

Smart, eh?

That said, my first trip into muscle beach was fraught with problems, ranging from what trousers I should wear to my lack of footwear and get-up-and-go mindset.

But walk in I did, purposively taking off my glasses so I couldn’t see either myself (sweating like a bullock) or anyone else watching me.

Nobody batted an eyelid, I’m happy to report. Thankfully, their vanity was my salvation because, let’s face it, the majority of gym trims are there because they either want to look good or they’re busily on their way to topping up their allure.

A big bird dying after two minutes on the treadmill and three seconds on the cross trainer doesn’t enter their orbit.

And for this week at least, concern about what other people may say/think/feel about me doesn’t enter my round world either.

I WONDER ....

... if hiccuping is my body’s way of telling me not to chew, or at least swallow.

For normal people, whose lives aren’t dictated by the eating/not eating conundrum, I’m sure they just think it’s an inconvenience.

They’d wait until the involuntary spasm of their diaphragm stopped, and then move on with what they were doing before.

Chances are it wouldn’t have been, like in my case, walking past Greggs and wondering if two cheese-and-onion pasties would be breaking the dieting law, even considering that I’d had nothing to eat that day and it was 3.27pm.

But as I approached the window of joy, I felt a sudden rush of air into my lungs which caused my epiglottis to close – yes, I started hiccuping.

The trouble with hiccuping when you’re as big as I am (no letters from smaller sympathisers please) is that you look like you’re doing a belly laugh. Only it’s no joke.

When big girls really chortle and let rip, it’s a beautiful sight. Normally it’s unfettered, throaty and uncensored.

But something also happens to that one bit of ourselves we can’t stand to be associated with but which follows us around like a gutsy lunatic.

Our bellies convulse, shake, rattle and roll about, jabbing their way further forward – if possible – into the world.

They thrust the unthrustable onwards, which means our big bums are left playing catch-up, our big behinds trailing behind.

We hiccup, and the world holds its breath, and if you’ve got that cough-wee association going on like I do, Pampers makes a mint.

I read, though, that one possible beneficial effect of hiccups is to dislodge foreign pieces of food.

I don’t know about you, but I know exactly what goes in my mouth, and none of it’s a stranger. And I’m fully conversant in the language of Carbs.

Anyway, the boffins say, “When a piece of food is swallowed that is too large for the natural peristalsis of the oesophagus to move the food quickly into the stomach, it applies pressure on the phrenic nerve, invoking the hiccup reflex.

“This causes the diaphragm to contract, creating a vacuum in the thoracic cavity, which creates a region of low pressure on the side of the lump of food nearest the stomach, and a region of high pressure on the side of the lump of food nearest the mouth.

“This lungs differential across the food creates a force, which assists peristalsis.

“In humans, gravity partially assists peristalsis, but in quadrupeds and many marine vertebrates, their oesophagi run roughly perpendicular to the force of gravity, so gravity provides little assistance.

“The hiccup mechanism likely evolved as an aid to peristalsis in our ancestors.”

Or, if you take me as an example, it’s what happens when you forget to chew a custard slice and appear to swallow it whole. Yes, vipers have nothing on me.

People are always banging on to me about why I should listen to my body.

Then, they say, I’ll only eat when I’m hungry and stop when I’m full.

I must be deaf then. I know I’m blind to the notion of my allure, and it seems I’m also devoid of another sense, in the “common” sense of the term.

I spent about a month listening to a Paul McKenna CD, one which would help me gain control of my diet.

All I got at the end of the four weeks was a dislike for an Essex accent.

For all my gesticulating, though, I don’t often eat cakes or pasties or really, really bad things.

But I do binge and fall into a vat of self-negation as I mentally step over a sea of empty wrappers and mountain of breadcrumbs from a fresh cob stuffed down my gob, actions which cruelly make me binge all the more.

And I was bingeing while musing on pasties and the fact I told my Significant (thin) Other I was going to go back to Fat Club (again...) next week.

I realise now that at the same time – I think I must have been semi-unconscious or in a flaky pastry daze – I was attempting to swallow the custard slice. Width ways.

It was then that the hiccups started.

I didn’t go back to the office to ask someone to startle me, drink water through a cloth or hold my breath.

But there is something to be said for eating a spoonful of sugar/honey/peanut butter while waiting for nature to take its course.

Me at Baglan library ...

... where I "entertained bookworms in a funny, frank and hilarious fashion" (apparently!)

I doubt that anyone ...

... would say on their deathbed, “You know, I wish I’d spent more time on the internet.”

They may, however, say, while facing down the gates of heaven which are more chewing gum white after a lifetime of bad living than pearly, “If only I’d had more ice-cream.”

Someone sent me an email asking me to think about that the other day. It came from a VERY fancy author, one of the biggest selling in the UK let alone Wales.

She was blathering on about how much she enjoyed my book but – there’s always a big BUT isn’t there, especially when us big girls turn around and catch sight of the trailer trash that is our derriere – she couldn’t understand the way I treat myself in its pages.

It’s the same old story, moans about why I spilled my ample guts in such a way, and why I beat myself up about my perceived limitations and weaknesses, especially around homemade lasagne and chips.

“But you’re lovely just the way you are,” she threw at me from the safety of her size 14 zone.

“A friend of mine spent a lifetime dieting and never seemed to be satisfied with the way she was, even though everyone said she was lovely. And do you know what she said to me before she died? ‘If only I’d had more ice-cream.’ You want to think about that.”

And think about that I did, for a few minutes at least.

I thought, yep, she’s right – why am I ruled by my weight? Why do I allow myself to weigh out my self-esteem by how many pieces of bread I have a day?

So I did what any self- respecting professional dieter would do after an epiphany – I ate my lunch at 27 minutes past nine. In the morning, you understand.

I got up off my now beautiful arse and walked towards the tiny fridge in work which seemed to be filled by two of my rolls, grabbed the one, took it to my desk and started to unwrap the foil which was hiding away my hope and fears in one tiny bundle of egg and cress in a Tiger Roll comforter.

And I ate, I chewed, I bit down on more eggy cressness while the years of weight watching confusion suddenly cleared.

And then… and then… and then… I broke a tooth. While I’m digesting this new twist in my sobriety, the sheer force of my hunger to right my lifetime of wrongs – and, okay, eat for Wales before anyone noticed I was having my lunch for breakfast WITH my breakfast – my greed backfires big style.

Agony is NOT the word; but I still managed to chew the other one on the right hand side while my left canine was split in half and digging into the root of my mouth. I’m nothing if not resourceful.

The next day, having spent the night celebrating my return to toothy form with a quart of Green & Blacks ice-cream, my new sense of equilibrium was tested in the most cruel of ways.

No, I didn’t have to have a medical, wear Lycra, run a mile, go braless, go sleeveless and straighten my hair – I had to go and interview singer Katherine Jenkins.

She’s lovely, is Kath, really down to earth and chopsy.

She’s also as big as my wrist and just about comes up to my belly (and you know how a girl hates drawing attention to that… she’s so small she could hide under it to avoid a tan).

The diminutive diva opened the door to me, threw her arms around me and said – yes, without a smirk on her flawless face – “Han, you look so glam! You look amazing.”

Honest to God, that’s what she said – Size Dwt, perfectly formed, not a hair out of place Jenkins.

And what did I say? “Shut up Kath… I came on the bus, my legs are chaffing, I’ve had two fags and been spraying Samsara like there’s no tomorrow all over me to disguise it, my knickers are too tight, you’ve got a hairdresser and make-up artist doing the magic on you this morning so forgive me if I start to involuntarily twang during our interview, and I put fake tan on this morning instead of foundation cream.”

She asked about my book (“What’s it about?” Me being fat. “You’re not fat.” Shut up Kath, I think you must have one eye in Brynmawr, the other in Tonteg. “You’re so funny.” And you’re so tiny.)

If there’s anyone in the world who can silently remind you that having too much ice-cream could be a bad thing, it’s her.

But that didn’t stop me from trying out the nerve endings on my newly-repaired gnashers with a 99 and two Flakes on the bus back to reality.

I didn't buy her video,

... but that’s only because it wasn’t in Tesco when the need to be educated inch by inch by Jade Goody came over me.

It didn’t last long, like many of my good intentions.

But this one day, thinking that I’d try yet another scam to get myself fit and feeling fabulous again, I thought I’d give the girl a try.

But Jade’s Shape Challenge and me wasn’t meant to be.

I got Gaynor Faye’s fitness DVD instead, but gave up on that as a bad lot when housemate Hiya Love had an asthma attack watching me do fake skating on the bathroom mat and star jumps in the kitchen. Not a pretty sight.

Besides, I was thankful it wasn’t on the shelves because I can’t stand her voice, the same voice that once declared the Mona Lisa was painted by someone called Pistachio, Rio de Janeiro was a “person”, Mother Theresa “is from Germany”, Portugal was “in Spain”, “East Angular is abroad”, “Saddam Hussein was a boxer” and “I may not be the sharpest tool in the sandwich box.”

Anyway, guess what I learned today?

Miss Goody has been a bit of a baddie because she’s about to appear on Tonight with Sir Trevor McDonald (as an aside, how dull is that man?) and reveal that when she dropped two dress sizes, it wasn’t really down to her evangelical jumping about.

Nope, mouth almighty was actually addicted to slimming pills.

Jade will spill the salt-free, low-fat beans to Sir Trevor about her desperation to shed the pounds after becoming famous on Big Brother back in 2002.

As you may recall, Jade was originally nicknamed Miss Piggy after her stint in the BB house, but after leaving the show she slimmed down and, of course, made the fitness video.

An insider from Camp Goody is quick to insist that although Jade’s weight has increased rapidly since her controversial appearance on Celebrity BB, she has not resorted to slimming pills again.

This in turn prompted one online women’s magazine to gloat, “We feel so cheated, here we were tirelessly working out to our ‘Let’s get fit, and get dancing’ vid, and all along she was just popping pills. Bloomin’ cheek!”

Is that what you think? Are you of the opinion that she in some way cheated her audience?

Well, okay, so you may have a point. But – and here’s the big question – would you take slimming pills if you could get your pudgy little hands on them?

I would. And I have. And they didn’t work.

I’ve tried them a few times – from appetite suppressants to those blue babies which make you “expel” fat in not the most pleasant of ways.

Nothing worked on me. Mam Jones says it’s because I’ve got the constitution of a horse. (Sadly, my arse is the size of one too.)

I can’t berate Jade for doing what she thought she needed to do for the press to take her seriously. They don’t take pictures of fat birds, do they?

She may have fallen out of favour since her last and disastrous BB outing, but there’s no denying that since she first left the house as a gobby blonde in a tight pink dress, she’s not done too bad for herself.

It doesn’t matter how she did it, but she is still a lot slimmer. She’s a glossier brunette, with an on/off 19-year-old boyfriend, two sons aged three and two from a previous relationship, her own perfume, two fitness videos, a property portfolio, and a fortune in the bank from interviews and photoshoots with magazines and highly lucrative appearances in other reality TV shows such as What Jade Did Next and Celebrity Driving School.

She even ousted Victoria Beckham from the cover of celebrity-obsessed Heat magazine, struck up an unlikely friendship with Kate Moss (Jade, according to showbiz sources, has been invited to several parties at the supermodel’s home), and was recognised by Samuel L Jackson when the two found themselves on the same plane.

And why? It’s not her brain power is it. Nope, it’s because she lost weight and glammed up a bit.

And everybody loves a good diet story. Right?

The same goes for another Big Brother contestant, this time Welsh wonder Laura “Wangers” Williams.

She’s also decided to try to slim down because she’s been told she won’t get any big deals – or those prerequisite bikini shots in lads’ mags which really bring in the big bucks – because she’s not thin enough, a typical object of desire.

Laura says she’s determined to lose weight, tone up and get the kind of work “slimmer” BB exes bag.

“I’m trying to lose weight to get more work,” is how she put it to me when we met recently, gym gear at her side, in a Cardiff restaurant where we enjoyed a dieter’s dream lunch of cheese-loaded potato skins, cheesy garlic bread, full fat pop, onion rings and coleslaw.

“I’ve been told by loads of people that it will get me more work, see. Think about it – people like Chanelle (the Victoria Beckham wannabe from this year’s show) and others like her have had bikini shots in the magazines. Has anyone asked me? You’ve got to be joking. And I’m not all that big!” she points out.

“I’ve just got big boobs. To be honest, I don’t really care about what I look like,” an innocent’s grasp of irony seeping into her conversation once again.

“My agent – I got one for going on the show – tells me people like looking at nice-looking people. I don’t think I need to lose weight to look nice, but there you are. I’ve lost about a stone so far I think and want to get to under 10 stone. Anyway, perhaps I won’t like the thin Laura. Perhaps she’ll be boring and I’ll hate the skinny me. I’m living on fresh air and water these days.

“The press were cruel though. This woman in The Sun was talking about me and Shabnam in the shower, wondering how she managed to fit in there with me in there too, cheeky cow.

“Well I may be fatter than that writer, but she’ll always be ugly.”

I don’t think La Wangers has resorted to the pills in order spill the flab. Yet.

But I know what desperation tastes like. And sadly it always comes super sized.

Wouldn't it be great to feel happy?

You know, in your skin, just as you are, flab ‘n’ all happy.

I want that feeling so bad sometimes I can almost taste it. Taste, though, is my problem. Keeping a grip on the joy vibe is also up there on my checklist of things I’m crap at. It’s telephone directory size, as thick as my love handles and as incomprehensible at a quick glance.

So let’s cut to the chase and let me ask you one meaty question: How true to yourself are you? Can you stand up and say you’re dissatisfied with the way you or things in your life are? Are you honest?

I am. And it’s a big, big problem. Emotionally speaking, I’m as crumbly as Cheshire cheese. But I know that, and I can easily talk about why that is the case.

What I’m not prepared for, however, is how this attitude affects those closest to me. Let’s step back a bit though, and follow this through to its logical conclusion.

Last week, as I try to sell myself and my book based on these columns by being something of a media tart, I had a sniff of appearing in one of the nation’s biggest selling weekly women’s magazines.

This mag, which shall remain anonymous, loved my pictures, loved my story, loved my book, loved my attitude, loved me so much I could have been made out of chocolate instead of looking like I’ve been living on caravan-sized bars of the stuff for the past 35 years.

My publisher, my friends, the girls in work were whooping for joy at the thought of the book finally – finally! – reaching people over the Bridge. This could be IT, they all salivated – the kind of “it” that would put me up there with the literary greats. Yes, the people who wrote the Slimming World manual. So I was all set, ready for my BIG media break, even considering having my hair cut for the pictures, even if they were of me straddling a chip pan fryer.

And then… and then… and then came another email.

“We still want to do the feature,” it said. “But we want to make sure you’re okay with the angle we’re taking. You are, aren’t you, fine with your body? You’re at peace, right? You’ve stopped dieting and think you’re fabulous. You’re a size 16-18, yeah? You’ve finally accepted yourself the way you are. Agreed?”

Er, no. Not exactly. So, what would you do in my situation?

On the one hand, you’ve got your publisher breathing down your neck to do whatever it takes to sell books, got people’s well wishes to deal with, plus the added pressure of feeling that if you admit to feeling fine about yourself, wouldn’t you have spent the last god knows how many years living a lie? Wouldn’t the basic plot of the book – the ups and down of my dieting life, the way it has ALWAYS affected my self-esteem and outlook on life – then be a sham? Just like the time I tried to live on cereal for a week.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t pretend to be happy and content as I am when, let’s face it, every day is a battle with myself. Do you know what I mean?

I was gutted, but if you can’t be true to yourself, what do you have left?

Chicken fajitas, Green and Blacks with orange bits in and a burger from the Hard Rock Café for a start (at least that’s what I consoled myself with after the second email).

But – and here’s the rub – being true to who I FEEL I am has other consequences.

They also hurt my mother.

The other day I was on the radio, the Jamie and Louise Show on Radio Wales, talking about Diary of a Diet: A Little Book of Big. We laughed, we had fun, we had chocolate ice-cream for god’s sake.

After the show, I called Mam Jones thinking she would shower me with praise about how wonderful/funny/fantastic/ insightful I had been. Instead she picked up the phone in tears, wondering why my “act” – for want of a better description about being a Z-list fat “celebrity” – is based on putting myself down.

As Jo Brand says in the foreword to my book, you might as well have a laugh about who and what you are, if who and what you are is bigger than those who are having a laugh at your expense anyway.

I tried to articulate this to the world’s number one Han Fan, otherwise known as my mother, but nothing would assuage her. As far as she’s concerned, her pride at me – her daughter with the job, the achievements, the book, the big eyes and big hair – isn’t dependent on the success I get from being a “fat” author. Which means she’s unable to listen to me having a laugh at why I love corned beef rolls, the comedy of errors that has been my love life and the way I can easily self-negate when it comes to worshipping at the altar of carbohydrates.

“You’re as good as anyone else,” were her words, radio turned to off. “You’re as lovely, as beautiful, as clever, as good damn it. Why do you have to put yourself down all the time?”

“But Mam…”

“But Mam bloody nothing. To me you’ll always be a little girl holding my hand, the funniest little thing with the biggest eyes and the widest smile. You are more than the numbers on a bloody scales. You are my daughter. And I love you. I’m proud of you. But I won’t listen to you do this to yourself, however funny people might think you are.”

I felt like a porn star, the kind of person who has to keep what they do from the people they love because they know it’ll hurt them.

The irony, of course, is that by not admitting I feel more than I do about myself, that my self-esteem is fatter, I’ve ruined my chance of reaching more people who’ve weighed out their self-esteem along with their chips.

I told Mam Jones about the woman’s mag conundrum and she understood, said I shouldn’t sell myself out or admit to being less than I am. Go figure.

But somehow, doing the opposite doesn’t seem to be enough today either.

Imagine for a second ...

... a glossy magazine has decided you’re important enough to do a big spread on you.

Let’s say, for example, you are the kind of famous which warrants five colour pages of pictures and copy, numerous costume changes and you looking all loved up with your other half.

You’re not famous enough to warrant a front cover or get a big chunk next to Madonna’s hand vein specialist, or anything like that.

But, because you were once “up there” with the greats, such as Atomic Kitten and Bewitched, you’re still big enough to get arse-end coverage, your status now resigned to starting on page 94.

Claire Richards, who was once a Deeper Shade of Blue in the pop group Steps, found herself in this situation in last week’s OK! magazine when the crew went round her house to take pictures of her, partner Reece Hill and newborn baby Charlie.

Ostensibly there to mark the birth (and give the rest of us a good nose through their house), once they clapped eyes on her they appeared to be more interested in one thing: Claire’s gone fat.

Bandmates Ian ‘H’ Watkins – the Welsh one – Faye Tozer, Lisa Scott-Lee – oops, sorry, I forgot she’s from Rhyl – and Lee Latchford-Evans continued to live their lives in the spotlight, it seems that “shy Claire”, instead of bathing in the flashes of paparazzi bulbs, has spent her time eating cake off radar.

Happy as a pig in the proverbial she might have been, but because she’s had to face the cameras once again, her chocolate covered love-ins are apparent for all the world to see.

Now me being me, and seeing with two big bold eyes instead of seeing through a judgmental skinny lens, can safely say she doesn’t look as fit as she did when she was the main “voice” of Steps.

Sue me, but she doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean she looks awful. She just looks like a happy, size-16-plus-new-mum.

Everyone knows that people are, by and very bloody large, more attractive when they’re smaller.

But – and here’s the clincher – if there wasn’t a picture printed alongside the piece to remind us of her slim days in Steps, you’d just think, oh, there’s a nice looking girl.

But not the writers at the magazine. Nope, they went to town on the fact she’s put on loads of weight, kindly souls that they are.

Of course they do all the invariable oohing and aaahing over the baby, asking the inevitable questions about late nights, the shock of giving birth and celebrity godparents.

And then, after lulling the poor dab into a false sense of security, they go in for the kill.

From asking “how is the nappy changing?” they clomper stomper their way through with, “Are you planning to lose the baby weight in record time like most celebs, Claire?”

Nice, eh?

“I really want to lose the weight, but I’m not good without help,” said the singer, obviously choking on her family-sized bar of Galaxy.

“I have no discipline. I used to be in my Steps days and was happy to starve myself for a week.

“But I can’t do that any more. I try not to eat bad food, but it was my birthday a couple of weeks ago and I ate most of my birthday cake and the leftovers.

“When I was in Steps the routines would make it easy to stay trim.

“In fact, I got quite obsessed with trying to be slim and I didn’t go about it in the healthiest of ways. I never had an eating disorder, I just didn’t diet the best way – I’d eat one meal a day, which was stupid because I needed energy to do all those routines.

“Back then, I always thought I was the fat one in Steps. Now I look back and think, God, I wasn’t like that at all!”

We’ve all done it, haven’t we? Got obsessed about dieting, losing weight, keeping fit, eating, not eating, weighing out your chips along with your self-esteem.

Look at me – I’m back in diet class after saying I’d never go again, wondering if this plan, one of the many, will be THE ONE to help us move on with the basic art of living.

Or, and here’s a novel idea, it could be the plan which breaks the camel’s back of my dieting life, and we I accept myself as I am, warts ‘n’ flab ‘n’ imperfections ‘n’ all.

Claire, bless her, is even asked what she weighs, if she’s “down” about being the newly crowned queen of the Pop Star Gone To Seed gang and if – IF – she’d lose weight IF her boyfriend proposed to her.

They might as well have asked her to pull her heart out and let the skinny stylist stick her stillies in it then kick it around the room.

“Well I won’t go wedding dress shopping until I’ve lost the weight. I’d hate it.

“You have to look fabulous,” she says.

As if fabulous is measured in Pronuptia. Then again...

A RIGHT old jumble of thoughts ...

... mixing up along chaotically with the fat free strawberry yoghurt I had for breakfast. So big I think the Amercians would call it a cart. Or a quart. Whatever, it was massive.

Here’s what’s rumbling (sadly, it’s never my belly).

I’ve put on weight. I knew I had. I can just sense these things, like a half baked psychic, heavy on the sick.

The grand total of my dietary shortcomings is 8.5lbs. That’s in two months, which is how long it’s been since I last went to Fat Club.

I know it’s just over half a stone because I went back to Han Reunited FC last Monday, new (fat and thin) faces filled with hope lining up for a go on the scales.

FC teach, the biggest loser of them all in the best possible way, called me up to say welcome back. I said I’d put on 8.5lbs as my hello. She said not to worry. I said it was OK for her to say that, she’s lost 76876 of the buggers.

But to make her point, she said she’d been on holidays and put on 9.5lbs. That’s more than me, in case you’re rubbish at maths.

Since I last saw you, I asked. No, she said. Since holidays. Had you been away for two months, then? Two weeks, she said again. “I put on 9.5lbs in two weeks. It’s the b****** chocolate and lager. So you haven’t done so bad. God, I’m depressed.”

Chocolate and lager, not my weaknesses but I know that if I drank (I don’t) or was a chocoholic (I like a sneaky bar of Dairy Milk with the best of them, but it’s not a hankering) I’d be on her team.

I felt better, for a moment. Thinking that even if the biggest loser can put on - and she knows all the rules of the game, down to even having a special container with only her milk allowance in the fridge - I’m not as bad/crap/useless/human as I felt.

So I had two packets of crisps - low fat, in case you were wondering - to celebrate being so, well, human.

Anyway, two months ago I said to myself, as I tend to do in moments of clarity, that I’d try really, really hard to lose some more weight before my book launch, this coming Saturday in Cardiff (Waterstone‘s noon-2pm; WH Smith, 3pm-4pm if you‘re interested in having a copy and a free donut). So that I could go shopping in that magical land called ANYWHERE and pick up something nice.

My book’s out officially on Monday, based on these columns of mine. To give it its full title it’s Diary of a Diet: A Little Book of Big.

And guess what? I’m 8.5lbs heavier that I was two months ago. I’m so good at being bad I feel like a national treasure, so much so my face should be on tea towels so the Japanese tourists can take me home as a memento of What Not to Stuff when they come to Wales and fancy over-indulging on the Welsh fudge.

So what to wear to the launch? Something dramatic, Significant (thin) Other suggested. I reminded him that you can’t get Juicy couture in sour sized. Or the Fat ‘n’ Fabulous range in Principles.

A trip to Cardiff, then, to visit the Big Five of My Big Life - Chesca, Elvi, Anne Harvey, Box 2 and Evans, the total sum of my plus sized shopping experience.

Evans - sale stuff along one side of the shop, an abundance of leisure wear and stuff fat clubbers could make silly in. So, as you can imagine with one down and four shops left to go, disappointment started to jab.

Chesca - fine if you like glitzy cropped tops or were going to a wedding and didn’t mind going see-through.

Elvi and Anne Harvey - I’m 35, not 205.

Box 2 - £250 later I have two tops. Sufficiently dramatic, S(t)O panders. Hmpf, I tell myself, I think I look like Jo Brand dressed by Trinnie and Susannah I slam at him. Yes but Jo Brand liked your book so much she wrote its foreword, he tries again. (But my feet are hurting, thwarting anything getting through to my ears.) So, I goad, knowing how much he hates shopping for himself, what are you going to wear?

S(t)O, whose look is more crumpled Englishman abroad when he gives a damn, said we’d go to M&S.

To find a suit which looked like it belonged to an Englishman abroad, I ventured?

If they have it, he scowled.

S(t)O has the very same problem as me - he can’t find clothes to fit him as he’s the opposite end of the normality scale.

I’m fat, big bellied, tall and big boobed; he’s thin, flat bellied, tall with shoulders which Duncan Goodhew would covet, ones which he hates and I love.

I watch as he gets frustrated with himself, rally at the designers, wonder why he can’t get quirky in the long legged and lovely and big shouldered bloke’s section of M&S.

It’s like watching myself after a lifetime of being forced fed testosterone on rye.

Just try something on, I gently coax. Then came the clincher.

His “You don’t know what it’s like to be thin.”

No, I thought to myself, if you let yourself go and had three tidy meals a day, you’d slide into the normal zone.

And if I let myself go (even further), I’d need a vat of Vaseline to get my big fat arse through the swinging doors of the Last Fat Chance Saloon.

I’ve been crying today.

How many people tell you when they’re really down?

To be honest, I don’t give a stuff about being the kind of girl who doesn’t wear her heart on her sleeve.

Remember, as a big bugger, I’m always in sleeves. I’m never bare armed.

That should tell you something about my emotional and mental well-being.

I know what’s caused it. I just don’t care much about acknowledging it. That’s my problem.

Yet, curiously, I know that if I don’t these peaks and troughs are going to continue to litter my life like the flakes of the FOUR bread rolls I ate in the car home from my mother’s the other day.

She gave me them to share out with Significant (thin) Other and housemate Hiya Love, along with some boiled ham.

But by the time I’d got to Morrisons on the top road in Ebbw Vale, two minutes away, I’d managed to light a fag while filling the buttered beauties with ham (AND pick out the fat and scary red bits) while driving.

I juggled guilt for a bit in the one hand too. Good, eh? I should be in the circus, me.

Then I had to walk into the house and mime to Hiya Love, like some half baked Lionel Blair, that I’d had all the food on the way down, making sure he knew what to say if Mam Jones phoned.

I also didn’t want S(t)O to get the gist of the exchange. Not that he’d mind, I don’t think – it’s just that he’s already seen me around the house without a bra on, I didn’t want to run the risk of him seeing me without my marbles.

The strange thing about tears, and about emotional razor blades in general, is that once you’re all cried out, when you’re free of the slump, you forget the real texture of sorrow.

All you know is that you had a feeling, a sensation so blue it was almost pornographic.

I’m like that now, oddly nostalgic – and starving – a few hours into my recovery time.

I don’t feel sad right at this very moment, but I am left with a real sense of palpable frustration with myself.

I can feel it, just like I feel my trousers getting tighter as a result of the indifference I’ve been suffering for the last few months, the type which manifests itself in crazy car journeys and dawn fridge raids.

Add another four rolls to my tally and I figure I’m now about 6,775 steps back from when I started to regain my sense of self by losing two stone off its carb-covered casing.

Things/stuff/comments, call exterior forces what you like, have conspired to make me feel like screaming at myself or apples, anything around me really, for being so bloody useless and self-defeating.

The rolling around with the rolls didn’t spark my most recent fall from the grace of personal equanimity, though. They were just the topping.

A tight bra, an evening out in a fashionable bar, an email which said “stop putting yourself down... you’re beautiful inside and out” (talk about missing the point of these columns), and someone getting upset about me never socialising with friends has me reeling.

I’m also facing up to the fact that I’ve put on weight, so much so that my cheeks are playing a game of kiss catch with my fringe.

It’s not hard for me to be candid about my weaknesses, or at least what I perceive them to be.

I’m so used to being so utterly uncomfortable in my own skin most of the time, it’s natural for me to talk about the unease when asked. It’s an almost light-hearted swipe at myself. But others don’t quite see it that way.

When I try to articulate this to people who are concerned about my well-being, those who prattle on about my weight NOT being an issue (Newsflash: It Is To Me), they don’t seem to like my answers to their questions.

“Why do you so rarely go out?” friends ask.

“Because I get so uncomfortable, especially after work and following a sneeze and wee session while everyone else appears to have dropped in after a make-up session heaven,” I tell them as they scowl.

“Why are you so hard on yourself?” someone else prattles.

“Because it’s so easy and I’ve got a leak in the self-confidence department,” I answer.

“But you LOOK confident, you ARE confident, you’re the life and soul when you do go out,” they reason.

Yeah, and Irony’s my mother’s other skinny daughter, this only fat child sometimes thinks to herself.

Can I just dispel ...

... a fat fact from the get go? Big birds don’t get up in the morning, step out of the shower and reach for an eclair before the deodorant.

It’s an urban myth, right up there with it’s not what you look like on the outside but how beautiful your heart is, or some such cereal packet absurdity.

Don’t you just love it when people assume that all you do is stuff your face all day long if you’re on the upper side of fabulous? Speaking as a card carrying member of the Fat ‘n’ Flawed gang, I’m too busy working out which diet plan I’m on from one minute to the next (depending on if I fancy carbs, cream cakes or taking up jogging) to think about what people really think about my eating habits or lifestyle choices.

To set the record straight, I have a really balanced diet – if you take that to mean a doughnut in each hand.

Seriously though, I eat well – I just sometimes eat too much of the good stuff. I’m also lazy, but I have the occasional spurt of activity.

I just forget to keep sight of the much bigger picture that is a healthier, fitter, more attractive me. In effect, I’m thin on balanced thinking.

Anyway, another fact about fat has been crushed this week which says that there’s no such thing as a naturally slim woman.

I’m reluctant to believe it though, that some of my thin gal pals aren’t naturally built that way despite stuffing themselves with all they like, and boozing too (at least that’s one sin I’m not guilty of).

I mean, if I ate and binged like they do, doesn’t it follow that I should be shaped like them?

Round’s a shape, right?

I have this relative who’s an egg-timer-shaped size 12 and she is positively dangerous around gateau.

Her idea of a good meal is an industrial-sized packet of pick‘n’mix followed by a pastie, McDonald’s ecstatic meal and ice-cream (mountain, not cone).

Apparently though, there’s no such thing as the skinny gene – just thin secrets, to which I obviously haven’t been privy to.

Genetics expert Dr Liz Kingsley has spent the last few years researching why some women seem to stay slim effortlessly while the rest of us chubby-faced mortals appear to balloon by feet around the belly area, rather than age-induced inches.

And her conclusion? Nobody’s born slim, but star figures belonging to bootylicious Tyra Banks to toothpick tastic Victoria Beckham are the result of hard work, not some genetic predisposition.

The brainbox says, “Many people believe they are a victim of genetics, particularly since the ‘fat gene’ was discovered earlier this year.

“This gene, which makes people more prone to store fat, affects one in six.

“However, our genes haven’t changed in centuries – one in six of our grandparents had this gene too, yet far fewer people were obese then.

“People with that fat gene are only predisposed to carry an extra 6lb, which can’t account for the current obesity crisis. The problem is down to lifestyle, not genetics.” It follows, then, that since these genes haven’t made you fat or plump or looking like you’ve got too much junk in the trunk, they also didn’t give slimmer girls hollow legs. Hmpf. Just nicer ones. “In my research,” bleats the shock doc, “I discovered the main difference between those who remain slim and those who don’t is behaviour.

“The good news is these ‘slim attitudes’ can be learned, leading to permanent weight loss.”

So where can you get a list of dos and don’ts that’ll make you lose weight without following that tried and tested old fashioned formula, living on fags and cheap cider? In the doc’s book, Thin Secrets (Bubbly Publishing).

I’ve dipped in – without the aid of a cheese straw, thank you very much – and found four rules of thinbalina etiquette.

1 Slim people have slim habits Don’t assume slim people are shaped that way without much effort. Compare their lifestyle and activity level to that of your common or garden lardy a*** and you’ll see all the evidence you’ll need, says Dr Liz.

2 Slim people make their size a priority Did you know that being slim doesn’t just happen, you have to make it happen? Who knew! You should see the work I had to put into being a size 22.

3 Slim people don’t ignore small changes Slimmies, I assume because they can get up out of a chair quicker, take action as soon as they notice a difference in the way their jeans fit.

4 Slim people don’t diet They don’t ban food, eat cereal morning, noon and night, avoid chocolate on a Wednesday at 4.17pm precisely or think that if they diet in January, they can “stock-up” at Christmas.

But it’s hard to change the habits of a lifetime, isn’t it?

I can make excuses about the way my mind works, but I find it so very hard to make the right choices when it comes to feeling less fat in the head.

Do you ever do that thing where ...

... you imagine you’re interesting enough to be on the telly?

I do it all the time. It started from the earliest age, where I would hold conversations with Noel Edmonds and tell him why I’d brought on a Hammond organ and battered Welsh hat with just the one piece of ribbon on Swap Shop.

From there, a fantasy fast car would drive me to the Tiswas studios and I’d file fake papers with Sally James to prove I was an Over Eight and not an Under Eight, the age I seemed to be forever in those little days of wanting to be big (not in the way you’re thinking).

Perhaps the Phantom Flan Flinger would persuade me to sing a song while being doused with water, baked beans and custard, getting the words out while I did that thing which everyone seemed to do – carry on while making a big show of flinging said flung stuff out of my eyes and blowing the remnants of pink goo out of my mouth (not without having a sneaky taste first, just in case it was blancmange).

If I was on This Is Your Life, Eamonn Andrews would allow animals on for the first time in the show’s history. Sat next to me would be Tudor the dog, Shortie the Shetland Pony and Head Like A Football, my black cat with a head like a, well, football.

I’m not sure if I’ve grown out of this metaphysical sideline of mine, as on the weekend I was watching The Taste of My Life.

By the time it had finished, and Nigel Slater was cooking Griff Rhys Jones something with eels, crabs and other fishy fodder, I’d been filmed stuffing my face with a chicken dinner, making a corned beef roll and doing “frothy coffee” in the microwave.

In case you haven’t seen it, The Taste Of My Life’s premise is essentially a very simple one. Slater gets to talk to a celeb, makes some of their favourite dishes, and by the magic of oil, nuts, refined flour and fancy white plates, he works out what type of person they are and narrates their biography in light of it.

Who knew eels could be so interesting and tell Slater our lad had been to Oxford? I guess kebab and chips may signify my alma mater, Cardiff University (onions, just to remind me to cry again, speaking of my Cambridge rejection letter).

Griff, posh paws that he is, so freakily health minded he hasn’t had any kind of carbohydrate for five years, was banging on about smoked haddock omelettes, shoulder of lamb, sushi, pumpkin soup and crab in the story of his culinary life.

I guess for a foodie-cum- cook like Slater, it made for an interesting menu.

On that basis, I fear that if he came round my house to relive my misshaped past, he’d have a heart attack. Or die of pre-packaged, deep frosted boredom.

What would he make of me in relation to my history of food choices and faves?

There’s nothing fancy in there, no unusual delicacies, no restaurant quality cooking.

My favourite meal is my mother’s chicken Sunday dinner – home-made gravy (no stock cube as I can taste it through doors), Yorkshire puddings, swede and potato mash, Birds Eye peas, chopped up cauliflower, mint sauce (not garden fresh, but the bottled stuff). Very specific.

Then there’s Hiya Love’s lasagne or his concoction of chicken breasts (ALWAYS boneless and skinless) stuffed with smoked bacon (all traces of fat cut off), topped with mozzarella (kind of fancy I guess) done in a red wine and garlic sauce combo.

I love a basic pizza, dipping the crusts in garlic mayonnaise if I’m lucky and nobody’s looking, steak well done (one drip of red and I’m done for) on the barbecue and perhaps a simple chicken salad (see above instructions), freshly baked bread and strawberry jam (without the bits in), followed by school-made chocolate pudding and white custard. Again, god’s in the details of the finish.

That’s it. Not much is there?

I’d like to think that maybe my choices say that I’m just a normal girl who sometimes gets tied up in specifics, someone with traditional tastes who simply knows what she likes.

(Or should that really be likes what she knows? Maybe that’s at the heart of it.)

And if lack of eels, crabs and lamb shank puts me in the dullard corner and makes me the culinary equivalent of watching paint dry, I’m not all that bothered.

Because you always have time for a fried egg and red sauce sandwich (crispy on the one side, bread lightly toasted) before even considering starting to gloss the skirting boards.

I thought I was being so good ...

... now that I’m a proper cohabiting grown-up for the very first time in my life.

Not only was I moving Significant (thin) Other in from his barn – yes, barn – to my terraced two up/two down in Hengoed AND dropping off a desk at his ex-wife’s (the second cousin to George Bush Snr, you know, her of the Picasso under the bed and size 12 glamour), I also thought I’d watch what I ate while the Big Move got underway. It was all going swimmingly, until it came to dropping off said desk.

There we all were, S(t)O, housemate Hiya Love and me in a vehicle that looked like a giant burger van, the word Jumbo emblazoned on the side just so there wasn’t any mistake, when the light of my life said it was time to pay a visit to Baubles.

I looked, after two days in a van moving furniture and cables and cases and crates, like a sack of the proverbial gone wrong. So I was in no mood to face dainty toes in that state because I knew she’d be all prepared for my little hello.

Baubles had called S(t)O and asked if I’d be going along to deposit the office furniture, which we all know really translates in the language of girl as, “Is SHE coming round? If so, I’m going to have to make sure I’m looking my best.”

It’s a universal standard, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter if you know someone isn’t emotionally involved with a former love any more, you’ve just got to know that you will be talked about in the right way if you bump into them.

Me? Well, I’m always riddled with doubts that I’ll be forever referred to as that “big bird”, the “fat girlfriend”, how about “funny, quite witty I suppose... but awfully plain”. You know what I’m talking about.

So I did what any sweating, dieting, untidy, scruffy, tired, testy girl would do: I sent in Hiya Love.

Armed with a satellite dish on his head, dictaphone and camera ready to beam information back to me and Mam Jones back in the Rassau, I hopped out of the van and walked the two miles to Tesco to sedate myself with a BBQ chicken wrap, full fat Coke and three fags.

(Amazing, isn’t it, how quickly good intentions fade away when you feel out of your comfort zone?)

Twenty minutes later, the burger van pulled up just in time for me to wipe the BBQ sauce off my mouth and spray the smell of fag ash away with eau de freebie from the smellies aisle.

“Don’t ask,” went Hiya Love, a man who normally judges a woman’s worth by the amount of pegs she uses to hang up a tea towel on a rotary line.

“She’s posher than anyone we know, has more proper art on the walls than a gallery, was all glammed up, got CREAM carpets running through the house and there was an actress from Coronation Street having a cup of coffee in the kitchen.

“Thank God you didn’t go in looking like that. You would have had a turn.”

He meant it with love; I took it badly to heart.

So much to heart, in fact, that through my skewed Hannah Filter I took it to mean that I would never be as good, glam, connected and cream carpeted as Baubles because – look away now – I’m fat.

It’s because I judge myself not by how fabulous I am, how clever, witty, warm hearted or loved... but because I always seem to have BBQ sauce on my chops.

And on my fingers. And usually, running down my clothes. Whereas grace seems to drip off everyone else.

There's a term they have in Fat Club ...

... that signifies the picking of oneself up out of the fridge and trying to find sensible patterns again.

The phrase “back on it”, copyright fat cows everywhere, is used to signify a return to good ways. It’s as if just by uttering these words, weeks of indifference will melt away like lemon drops and you’re back skipping your way along your personal yellow brick road to self fulfilment.

Trouble is, you’ve got to mean it and understand the breadth of the commitment. And I think I’ve lost my guide to its translation, if not direction on how to move forward again.
You must have used it, right?

You must have said you’ve been “off it” – ie dieting – long enough to feel bigger, sadder, rounder.

So much bigger, sadder and rounder that you feel the need to go “back on it”.

By that reasoning, you’ve been “off it”, fallen from grace and possibly face first into a vat of black forest gateau. Following?

I’ve been “off it” for about four weeks now, enough time to make me feel slovenly, out of control and lazy. Oh, and ugly, an inedible curse.

I’ve eaten normally for me, which is abnormal for anyone else.

On Sunday, because I wasn’t thinking about what I WAS doing rather than what I wasn’t, I had five Yorkshire puddings.

I convinced myself that because they hadn’t risen so well – each one just the size of a modest condo – it didn’t really count.

My mother, who has lost a staggering, magnificent and jealousy-inducing four stone plus a bit in just over a year, didn’t comment about my dietary indiscretions (I wasn’t wearing any make-up, my hair was flat and the birthmark under my eye had flared up – signs that something’s up with me, signals she can read without the aid of a map).

But not saying something was almost worse in a way because silence, in her case, isn’t golden. It screams disappointment. Not IN me, but FOR me. The difference, Mam style, is huge.

Me being the defensive, useless lumper that I am, answered her lack of vocalised opinion by saying, in between mouthfuls of paradise dipped into her chicken gravy, “Anyway, I’m back on it tomorrow. I’ve done it before so I can do it again. And I’m TINY on your scales.”

“Back on what? And you know those scales don’t work properly,” came her answer.

“The diet of course. I’ve not really been on it lately but it’s Monday tomorrow and I thought I might as well enjoy my Sunday dinner so I can go back on it feeling refreshed (read stuffed) tomorrow. And what do you mean they don’t work?”

I’d hopped on the scales in the hope that I hadn’t put on any real significant weight since my calorific demise and I was delighted to see I was lighter than I’d been in ages.

But not really convinced after the font of all knowledge’s warning, the day after I went into Boots and was even lighter again. Three stones lighter than when I first started in Fat Club in January in fact.

Confusion must have been written on my face because one of the assistants asked me what was up.

When I explained that I was now officially not a death threat but simply clinically obese (rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? Such a beautiful term...) according to the piece of paper in my hand, she offered to test out the machine again.

So off she went and got another 30p out of the till for me.

On I stepped and yes, there in black and white, was the good news in duplicate.
Confused? You bet.

Despite that, the fact that I was POSSIBLY three stones lighter made me feel like I had diamonds in my hands instead of baby-like dimples.

I was, to put it mildly, elated. And then came the crash.

Over at the coffee shop later that day, I overheard two thinnies talking about their weigh-in at another chemists earlier that week.

It doesn’t matter where it was, only that they’d relied on a fantasy set of scales to fill them with false hope.

Each had come in at – read it and weep girls – 8lb and 10lb lighter on the digital magic counter compared to their real Fat Club weight.

“Never mind,” said the size 12.

“We’ll go back on it tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” said the other. “But best finish off these muffins first.”

Back on it, I thought to myself. The point of my forever return.

HAVE you ever seen a good fat dancer?

There wasn’t any on Fame! as far as I can remember.

Some may say the character of Doris was a bit of a lumper, but what they mean is that she wasn’t a size 12 and had Curly Sue hair. In other words she wasn’t as nice looking as Coco or that one with the cello and flat hair who couldn’t sing.

So when it came to dance lessons, our Doris would make light of the fact that she couldn’t barrida with the thinnies and instead hop off to the canteen where she’d bounce on a table and belt out something or other about high-fidelity (high, high, high).

Then there was that blond bloke with the sousaphone, played by some nerdy FAT type who was a hated hall monitor.

Did we ever see him dance, in a school that was supposed to make its pupils masters and mistresses of all the art forms?

Did we hell. We only got to see him getting teased in the hallway and tell anyone who’d listen that a sousaphone isn’t a tuba. A fat instrument played by a fat kid who had no sense of humour.

I mean, talk about type casting.

I for one can’t dance. Sure, I can shake my arms around and make like I’m designing bricks or scratching my arm pits (as someone said, making like I’m bathing a rabid cat on the dance floor).

I don’t mind jiggling and wiggling about, but I think it’s a bit unsightly on me to be honest.

Like in most areas of my life, I’m too self-conscious and rely on comedy and quick wit to disguise it.

I move... my belly(s) goes the other way.

I go to the left and step to the right... my arse plays catch-up in the next room.

But I’m fabulous at the cakewalk. You get the picture.

Now I may not be so much a demon on the dance floor as someone who avoids any kind of activity done in public while wiggling, but I don’t think bigger people who have obviously got talent in this department should be stopped from doing it just because they have a lot going on in the chin department.

Which is why I think Arlene Phillips’s treatment of that bloke from Wales who didn’t get through on DanceX on Saturday was so unfair.

The cameras followed this big fella around – sorry, can’t remember his name – not because he was brilliant (he was), funny (not bad) or handsome (he did have something going on).

But because he stood out from all the rest. And why?

No, it wasn’t because he had Wonder Woman on his knickers or thought he was the love child of Michael Jackson and Carmen Miranda.

BECAUSE HE WAS A DANCING FAT PERSON.

And that, according to the show’s makers, singled him out as a “human interest” emotive story. Big wow.

I watched Arlene watch him and pull faces like she was sucking a gone-off lemon, knowing full well that for the type of group she had in mind his “look” wasn’t what she was after.

The poor dab was obviously deluded because he thought his dancing was enough to get him in the final dance off.

“Don’t judge me on this,” he said, making a sweeping motion with his hands over his face.

“Judge me on these,” and plié down to his feet. Yeah, as if the world only judges on talent alone. The thought is enough to put me off my breakfast. Then again...

Anyway, our pal’s card was marked from the outset because acid-tongued Arlene, the woman with a face like a 10lb trout (she’s a bitch, and I’m now in training to follow in her dainty footsteps), said in a recent interview that she’s inflexible about what kind of dancer she wants in her troupe.

Put it this way, she doesn’t want Dawn French in a tutu.

“I’m looking for gorgeous, unusual dancers,” she said.

“I think the most important thing is not only that they can dance but also that they’re physically fit.

“I’m afraid I’m not flexible about size and shape.

“I’m so politically incorrect that the producers have struggled to keep me from shouting out about people’s size.”

So what would she bellow, given the chance?

“Britain, you’re overweight.

“It’s also about lack of strength. I don’t mind if somebody’s big, so long as they’re strong and their muscles are toned. But some of them look like puddings.”

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never met a pudding I don’t like.

Only the skinny ones with no filling or substance.

AS in most areas of my life, I’ve been beaten to the chase.

I’ve written this book, see – it’s based on these WM columns of mine and to give it its full title it’s Diary of a Diet: A Little Book of Big. It’s out in September and is published by Accent if you’re interested (please God!).

But some other big bird with similar hair – and who is certainly more famous than my alphabet soup status – got there first me too it. And I’m gutted.

So there I was, wasting time on a day off watching Loose Women when the hens brought on Mikyla Dodd, who was on to talk about being big and being on the telly.

She was classed as “the fat girl from Hollyoaks” – also the title of her book – and on she strode in high-heeled baby doll shoes and the kind of fun-filled attitude I can only dream of.

I’ve read her book, and although her story has got loads of similarities to mine, the differences are glaring.

Her: Gorging on fast food and bingeing on alcohol and drugs.

Me: Penchant for cold pizza and Shandy Bass on a hot day.

Her: An abortion aged 13, a sexual assault and the death of her sister from bowel cancer.

Me: I had a nasty Shetland Pony called Shorty who suddenly went to horsy heaven one Sunday. (I later found out he was horse napped by some blokes from the Rhymney AFTER my mother paid them a fiver each to take buckaroo away.)

Her: She’s recently done a naked photo shoot for a magazine.

Me: I’m waiting for the call from the marketing folk at JCB.

Her: 24 stone at her biggest, she’s now 15 stone 6lbs and is trying to get down to 14 stone before her 30th birthday later this year.

Me: I was born 14 stone and my scales don’t register that light these days as I think they’re made by Reinforced Inc and start at not-so-sweet 16 stone.

Her: She played Chloe in Hollyoaks for nearly five years and went on to lose the most weight of any female contestant in Celebrity Fit Club.

Me: I played Nancy in a school production of Oliver! and my “celebrity” isn’t enough to get me a free gym membership.

Her: Mikyla’s mother would say that other kids were staring at her because she was beautiful; her father took a crueller stance, berating her for being overweight.

Me: The sun set in my eyes. While dark, Dad removed the remnants of a family-sized pack of Salt ‘n’ Shake from my hands as I slept.
It’s a dark read, Mikyla’s book, often tragic and desperate.
But it’s also inspirational I guess, because she does get a grip on her relationship with food.

I’m still writing this diet column, so I guess you’ve got to assume I still haven’t won that fight. And that’s what my book is about – the very ordinary act of living it large when it makes you feel kind of small for not being more than you feel you should be.

Remember the cabbage soup diet? The Atkins? The sucking a teaspoon of custard through a straw plan? Abject misery? You name it, the book’s about the diets I’ve loved to hate and not lost anything on.

It also covers my recent journey back to Fat Club, and the ups and plenty of downs of getting where I am today – dropping from a size 24 to a 22 (big bloody wow) since January and shedding a measly two stone to get there (rubbish rate and a huge amount for such a little return).

It’s the story about my struggle to commit to get fit, stick to a sensible eating plan or think, once and for all, bugger it, I’m simply fabulous just the way I am today.

Diary of a Diet, the tome that is, is an alternative diet book – so alternative in fact it won’t tell you what not to eat and I’ve broken it up into chapters that you can metaphorically nibble on in between pork-pie love-ins.

In fact I’m thinking of giving away pasties with promotional copies, but I’m fearful of having a house full and not enough stamps to lick to keep me busy.

It’s just a witty (well, I hope so at least), heart felt (certainly) and often sad (cow) study on living life in the fat – oops, sorry! – fast lane to self-acceptance.

It’s a book about me that just happens to have been written for women, whatever their shape or size, who’ve ever felt pressure to weigh out their self-esteem with their chips.

So that’s one thing the fat girl from Hollyoaks and I have in common at the very least.

WHAT am I going to wear?

This isn’t just any old party, you know.

It’s being organised by Significant (Thin) Other’s ex-wife (the rich American one, not the Blackpool-based one who’s the mother of his children – this lot make a Dynasty storyline look like a chapel-based coffee morning).

I’ve never met her before, just lived in the shadow of her wealth, distant relation status to the American President (second cousins or something), stories of Tiffany twiddle sticks and a “small, very small” Picasso gathering dust under the bed, her BLONDE HAIR, SIZE 34F CHEST and SIZE 12 FRAME.

Top heavy she may be, but brilliant, beautiful, connected and – here’s the clincher – considerate she most definitely is. Don’t it just make you sick?

So I’m eating soup. No Tiger rolls from Tesco to dip in. In readiness. Scoffing pineapple chunks and grapes by the bucket load too. To lose a stone. Just the one. Just in case I need less of me to feel more.

I’m letting my roots go a bit manky so I can have a new dye job the week before, practising with high hells (sic) in the evenings, thinking nice thoughts to get me in the mood so that I’m not Bad Hannah that day.

You know, the day OF THE MEETING.

Anyway, how civilised is this? Not only do Wife Number 2 and my S(T)O get on really well – she even asks about me for God’s sake – she’s organising his goodbye party before he moves in with me.

No, not his good riddance party – they’re far too grown-up for all that.

She’s organising a do to say farewell to her former love – my current one... keeping up? – and inviting all his friends over to say tata to him and (gulp) hiya to me.

So not only do I have to make merry with the American with the boobs and things, I also have to play sociable with a gang of strangers.

So I’ll repeat again – WHAT THE HELL AM I GOING TO WEAR?

Which brings me neatly to the soup and pineapple plan.

But my reasoning – well, Gillian McKeith’s actually, otherwise known as the diminutive diet dictator – is that I could lose a total of three stone by the time I have to go to play Is She Worth Leaving Your Home For? with the Cheshire set.

So I’m watching an advance copy of McKeith’s new Channel 4 show, Three Fat Brides, One Thin Dress (which is on tonight, incidentally).

In each episode Smug the Scot meets three “bulging brides-to-be” (her term, not mine) in desperate need of her help. They’ve got just eight weeks to transform their appearance and well-being, with the prize of the wedding dress of her dreams for the bride who has the greatest success.

But it’s not just about weight loss: the brides must pledge to stick to McKeith’s vows, and the winner will love her foods, honour her regime and obey her rules to her wedding day and beyond.

Anyway, the girls lost around two stones each just by munching on pulses and grains with names I can’t spell let alone pronounce.

So I got to thinking, if they can do it, why can’t I?

Then I tried lentils. Then I had a nut. Then I came to my senses.

Then I heard of another friend who’s had gastric bypass surgery who’s only allowed to have a tea-plate sized amount of food a day.

It’s a liquid diet and she’s lost so much weight in a month, another friend wondered if she’d been dieting or simply loosened her necklace.

It was – and roll around with me in the words every dieter wants to hear, just for a minute – hanging off her. Bliss. I’m following her lead and going on a soft food diet (notice how swiftly I moved from a liquid diet to one with the word food in it?).

I don’t know how long I’ll stick it out, but I’ve got a blonde in my mind sat under a wonderful work of art, regaling good friends with tales of happy days she and my man spent together.

S(T)O says I’m mad – but also beautiful and brilliant and other Esperanto I don’t understand.

I just about picked out, “They’ll all adore you like I do and want to be around you.” But as I said to him, I have to at least FEEL I look good while I’m false smiling and trying to look someone in the eyes and not the chest.

If that isn’t inspiration enough, I don’t know what is.

Not for a second did I think ...

TWO bits of good news this week. Greedy bugger, eh? There’s also some bad vibes floating around, but they are from my fellow Fat Club members who put weight on last week.

BUT I LOST FOUR POUNDS!

As you know, until the end of last week it’d been boiling hot.

I’m not sure if that’s supposed to affect people’s weight – I’d always been told that you ate less in the summer (although I’ve not noticed a slowing down in my chewing abilities).

But when the girls in front of me in the FC queue ALL failed to lose anything, they all had the same one-size-fits-all- lardy-arses explanation: “Must be the weather.” (Yep, that or the fact they ate their body weight in barbecue sauce because they convinced themselves that al fresco dining is fat free).

One by one they’d stand on the scales while the evil-tongued thinnie in bold gold jewellery in charge of writing down the damage in their chubby check book would break the news that they’d failed in the weigh game.

And they’d all, bar none, get this look on their face; not a look of idle acceptance that they’d obviously sinned and were now paying the price. But one of total disbelief – you know, like the one you have when you’re told eating 10 fat-free pizzas is okay as long as you don’t swallow.

Too good to be true? Whenever you see that promise, it usually is.

Girl number one: “I’ve put on? There must be some mistake. I only had three pints of lager this weekend. It must be the weather.”

Bold Gold Weigher: “Yes, it must be the weather. (And I’m surprised the scales don’t say ‘sorry we don’t do livestock’ when you step on it). Next!”

Girl number two: “That can’t be right. Two pounds on? I’ve been really good all week and only been eating barbecue food. Do you think it’s the weather?”

Bold Gold Weigher: “That’ll be it. (And I bet that when you go to an all-you-can-eat barbecue, they have to install speed bumps). Next!”

Girl number three: “Here’s hoping for a loss... sorry? What did you say? That can’t be right, love. I’ve been living on fruit! Scones, bara brith, strawberry gateau. All low fat, mind. It’s this bloody weather – it makes you want to eat more.”

Bold Gold Weigher: “Bound to be the weather. (You may be 36-24-36, but that’s the measurement for your forearm, neck, and thigh.) Next!”

Me: “Four pounds off? That can’t be right. Must be this heat.”

But a four pound loss it was, bringing a genuine smile to the face of the queen of mean.
And I’m not talking about me there. For weeks now, I’ve felt stuck in a rut, failing to notice the weight that I had lost. I was not only losing weight, but context. I simply felt that I looked the same and that I needed a really big push to get me over the stumbling block, to haul my big fat *** over the two stone barrier and into that mystical land of Three.

What I needed was something palpable to make me feel better about myself.

Anyway, I found it in a shopping trip with my mother. Armed with a 40% press discount card for Outfit in Merthyr, we arrived ostensibly to look at the small Evans section.
But Mam Jones, ever the optimist, said I should look at some of the – gulp – size 20s from other sections.

... I could fit into a size 20 or even a 22 – I can’t remember the last time I was that small or went into a “normal” shop for anything other than accessories.

But you would not – WOULD NOT – believe my joy when I left with two size 22 tops from Evans (result!) and A SIZE 20 BLOUSE FROM WALLIS. Wallis!

It’s white, it’s low cut, it’s GOT ROOM AROUND THE BELLY AREA!

But do you want to know the best news of all? I didn’t celebrate my massive loss and gain with two corned beef rolls and a packet of crisps.

I’m thinking it must have something to do with the weather...

"Oh, that looks healthy ..."

... she said, as I was munching on yoghurts.

"Don't know if it is," I answered in between mouthfuls (I had to be quick as I had two open and I didn't want any of them to go off, now, did I?).

"I was told in Fat School there weren't any Syns in them. So I have, on average, about 10,765 a day now. Give or take."

"I guess it's the calcium in them, the Omega this and thats which is good for you then," my slim friend offered.

"Umm... well... haven't got a clue what's in 'em. I don't ask questions after hearing the words 'you can eat as many of these as you like'."

She came back with, "I'm trying to be good too. I've started to alternate a packet of cheesy biscuits with carrot sticks."

At this point, not ever having tasted a carrot but certainly having played that game of stuffing a load of cheesy biscuits into my mouth at the same time to see if I could talk with a dry gob, I wondered, for the umpteenth time, why really slim, lovely looking girls with bodies to die for and hair made for a Timotei advert, are so strict with themselves.

"Why are you being good?" I go, confusion written all over my face, now in a Lasting Satisfaction (please!) strawberry yoghurt.

"Have you seen your figure? If I had a body like yours and wasn't prone to putting on weight, I'd be stuffing for Wales all the time."

"Because... er... well... I suppose it's because I'm trying to be healthy."

"Healthy? No bugger can see your innards!" was my skewed logical argument back in her beautiful face. Funny, isn't it, how differently people see the weight thing. I've now lost one and a half stones (oi, you in the back – that's 21lb!) and I'm still fat in the head.

Whenever people ask me why I want to lose weight and why I'm on yet another diet, I always say it's because I want to live a more healthier lifestyle. My body, I tell them, is a temple (albeit one already semi-condemned with a few leaks in the roof). I don't give people the real reasons which can basically be reduced, just like a good bolognese sauce, to a few home truths, tossed in a not-so-light light Hannah-style dressing. And that's because I feel ugly, I hate not being able to buy stuff on the high street, and I want to see my feet.

This is my unholy triumvirate, otherwise known as the Three Little Pigs of Me.

When you say you're on a diet, that you want to lose weight for whatever reason, I'm sure that most women think I'm doing it to reach an absurd goal weight, some space age size.

Here's a newsflash – I DON'T WANT TO BE A SIZE 12. I can't imagine it and neither do I really fancy it if I'm honest. Okay, so I may be greedy when it comes to portions, but I'm not a glutton for delusion. I've said it before and I'll say it again, a size 16 to 18 would suit me fine.

This is what's attractive to me.

I'd even "settle" – reluctantly using that word because I don't want it to sound like I'm shortchanging myself – for a comfortable 20. Then I could shop where I wanted, I think I'd feel more attractive and I'm sure I'd be able to see my feet after all these years. I don't want to be the kind of slim where I'd be capable of touching my toes – as far as I'm concerned, if god had wanted me to do that, She would have put them on my knees instead of nobbles. Or think of carrots as a treat.

Words of wisdom:
"Self delusion is pulling in your stomach when you step on the scales" - Paul Sweeney