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.