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).