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.