I can't draw ...

I also can’t count, walk in high heels, touch my toes or develop an affection for stairs. And that’s just the start of things I’m not much cop at.

Thinking about my perceived limitations, let’s put “go on a diet and stick to it” on the list.

If there’s room, shove on positive thinking or the ability to thicken my skin just by will alone.

Ask me about my achievements, or to ruminate on what I’m good at, and I get stuck.

As part of my new therapy sessions for the TV documentary I’m making for the new year, I get to think about all this stuff while my feet dangle child-like off the end of a huge settee on the fourth floor (fourth!... even I can do the maths on that one) of a “treatment centre” in London’s Little Venice.

We’ve had tears, we’ve had mild tantrums, days without make-up, some where I’ve felt so joyous my roots have spontaneously back-combed themselves, others that have left me feeling rather battered and confused by the jumble of contradictions that goes by the name of Me.

For anyone who’s ever struggled with their weight, let’s just say that my sessions with the Fat Shrink (an oxymoron if ever there was one) are going to be more enlightening to the uninformed masses than they are to me at present.

Hopefully, anyone who sees this programme will learn that weight isn’t all about what you put into your mouth and what you don’t do with your sweat glands (ie use them on anything other than rushing to make the breakfast times at Burger King).

For my Fat Shrink, the question isn’t so much what I need to do to lose weight (“eat less, move more, stupid”) but what’s happened in my life that’s made food my number one coping mechanism and my prize-winning pain.

Why are people fat? Superficially, this is as stupid a question as “How the hell did I get pregnant, Mam.”

We came, we chewed, we swallowed. Simple. Or is it?

The Fat Shrink has me literally drawing my life. And as I said, I’m not that good at it, or thinking about the things I’ve achieved or am good at.

She says I tend to kick around the positive aspects of my life and character with the tip of my toes. When it comes to shouting from the rooftops how flawed I think I am, I do it with ease and Olympian dexterity.

Only I needed her to tell me so.

But what’s made me like this?

A look at my ridiculously naive drawings to age 10 and then from 10 to 20, and patterns start to appear – or rather, characteristics and circumstances which I hadn’t really considered before.

An insular child. Self-contained. A busy family business. Self-reliant. Easy going. Sad. Sing-songy. Gutsy. Lazy. Lovely. Complicated. Happy. Content, with a box of salt ‘n’ vinegar Chipsticks for company sometimes.

And there are finger drawings for all of the above.

Then I find myself an Over Ten, in Tiswas competition terms. It’s boys (or lack thereof), school, music, decisions (Atkins or the French Women Don't Get Fat But Italian Women Do diet during the first year at university), the crippling loss of loved ones and the awful realisation than being a grown-up is a terribly sticky and difficult business.

But buns, as the Fat Shrink loves to remind me, don’t have to be.

Next week it’s back to the drawing board as I consider the trials and tribulations of my third decade. I’m not sure what revelations are awaiting me in purple and green hues.

Just like diets I’ve loved to hate and not lost anything on in my past, going back to my future is anything but a piece of cake.

How kind are you to yourself?

Apparently, I’m a first class bitch.

I learned this fascinating fact last Friday while sitting on the fourth floor of what can only be described as a treatment centre, where mixed-up people still like to read what’s hot and en trend even when having a meltdown.

It’s the only place I know for troubled souls which has the latest glossy magazines on the waiting room table – not Country Life or How To Raise Cats or Look At My Antiques And Weep – but the type of big reads even those with rock solid self-esteem would find demeaning.

But I guess there’s some cleansing to be done in the escapist tactics of fantasy.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been going to London for some hard love and tough talk, only you don’t get a cup or tea, a biscuit and a cwtch off your mother after one of these sessions.

It’s part of the documentary I’m making for BBC One, so as well as spilling my generously proportioned guts there’s also a film crew there recording me doing it.

Normally, I don’t mind. I find it quite a hoot to be honest, a bunch of people following me round and hanging on my every word and emotion for dear life in case there’s a “moment“ worth capturing, like me dragging my Significant (thin) Other through the sea (check), licking some diet success story’s arm so I can see what triumph tastes like (check) or retching while I taste new food for the first time (check, with fish, salami, cheese and olives on top).

But last week, in session number three, it all became too much for me and I had a bit of a meltdown.

I knew something was jabbing at me, unsettling my emotional balance, when I couldn’t be bothered to put on any make-up. And not just for a stroll in the park or to do the weekly shop – for telly. FOR TELLY!

This eventually led to a full-on emotional collapse, complete with rolling cameras, and ended with me back in Cardiff eating salad in Bella Pasta. Talk about cruel irony.

You’d think carbohydrates would accompany self-perception or finding out something new about yourself, what Oprah calls the fabled “aha!” moment.

But no, salad is apparently the way to go because salad is a way to be kind to yourself. Stuffing your face with pizza or – get this – NOT doing so, is all the same thing to someone like me, according to my new therapeutic best friend.

And by “someone like me” she means a person who needs to pay a deeper level of attention to their emotions if they are to lose weight and maintain it.

It’s apparently nothing to do with diets or willpower, the ultimate revelation if ever there was one.

My “counsellor”, Julia, is a formidable presence. She works with groups of women to help them understand their eating and why they use food to manage their emotional lives.

She then helps them develop different strategies for managing their feelings so that they can let go of their use of food.

And now she’s turning her attention on me, one on one.

Her thing, if she has a “thing”, is about lighting candles to self-perception, not fumbling about in the darkness which is what I seem to have spent my life doing.

It’s trying to disengage our fly-by-night and flimsy illusions of beauty and smarts, telling the self-deprecating humour to take a break and just go back to basics.

And in order to get there, you have to ask yourself some very difficult questions.

Three sessions in, with three more to go, there’s been more tears shed in front of her (and potentially about nine million others when it goes out in January) than any other person I can think of.

I’ve felt childlike, odd, fractious, confused, elated, delighted, small, calm, peaceful and angry.

What I don’t feel yet, however, is closer to finding my way forward.

Although with her help I’ve been able to trace my way back through the graze of my bad habits.

Oddly enough, these don’t always revolve around carbohydrates. It’s how we think of ourselves, and how we each deal with that perception, which is at the heart of the matter. And I’m just step one into literally eating my own heart out.

IN front of me there is a piece of paper ...

... with 12 smoking guns on.

At the top of the page are the words, “Eating triggers”.

Under each picture, and within a Countdown-like timeframe, me and three other women with weight “issues” or a Curly Wurly-like body image were asked to write down under each one what we thought our triggers are.

I started off with “breathing”, as in I’m awake and that’s normally enough to set me off into the dangerous playground of carbohydrates if unsupervised, then I got to “thoughtlessness”.

Confused faces from the room resulted in me explaining this away in my usual cockeyed manner.

“Girls,” I said. “It’s like this, see. The only time I DON’T think of eating or how wrapped up I am in the confusion of what I can eat versus what I can’t is when I’m actually stuffing my face. See? That’s thoughtlessness. Because if I allowed myself some space to actually think about what I’m doing, or try to iron out the lumps in my self-perception, maybe I wouldn’t want to act out in the way that I do.”

My new pals all nodded their “ahas” and “yeps” and “God, I know what you means” with gusto, as we each shared our divergent stories about what binds us all together.

And that’s lasagne with crusty bits on the edge. It’s melted cheese. It’s full-fat pop and orange. It’s knowing you’re going to have chicken salad in a hotel restaurant when you’re travelling on your own only for your mouth to betray you during your order and you somehow silence the guilty chattering in your mind with beef burgers and chips. It’s about saying no to dieting. Or yes. And back again, without really understanding the force of your yo-yo. It’s about paying for that choice afterwards in the currency of guilt.

It’s the desertion of will power, the constant battle to DO something about it, to exercise yourself away and back into the safety zone of average.

It’s lack of motivation, it’s confusion, it’s bloody bonkers, that’s what it is.
And that’s what Lifeshapers, a multi-media Welsh company which helps you “find the tools you need to reduce your comfort eating, escape the dieting game and still lose weight”, aims to help you sort out.

It’s a big promise, but one that its founder, Chrissie Webber – think Cinderella’s fairy godmother only in turquoise and without anything made of pumpkins – says she can deliver on. Unlike most women who have been there and done it and lost the T-shirt as it’s now waaaaaaay too small, Chrissie is still a big woman. The difference between her and others who have “struggled” with their weight, is that she celebrates the fact that she has achieved so much – a 5st loss and counting – and doesn’t beat herself up about the fact that she’s not “there” yet, that holy grail of self-acceptance, or can always turn down a blueberry muffin. She can’t. And that, as I’m yet to fully understand, is the twist in the sanctity of being human.

Her voice, lying somewhere between caramel and Nutella on the gooey and gorgeous scale, is an exercise in joy; her demeanour kindly but never condescending; her message so hopeful and helpful it should come in tubes to rub in on doubtful days.
The whole ethos of Lifeshapers is to discover the weight you were born to be. And that, even by my wonky reasoning, means that it could be what you are right now.

Right this minute. It’s to adopt what wonder Webber calls “conscious eating” (and that doesn’t mean knowing you’ve got gravy running up your arm), “mindfulness” (meditations to reduce stress and therefore the need for comfort eating), “feeding your soul” (this is about loving yourself, perhaps the hardest skill to learn of all) and “body awareness” (loving the skin you’re in, another corker).

After only one session, I felt lighter, in spirit if not in stones. The danger for me is that I’ll fall hopelessly in love with this new philosophy. It’s happened on every diet I’ve ever been on, a full-on passionate affair which eventually fades away to something less promising when reality, or at least my version of it, sets in.

But if you’re looking for something new, something different, something not judgmental, something which you can do on-line as well as off, give Lifeshapers a go.

After all, it’s better to have loved and not lost a pound, than never to have loved at all.

Do you know where I can find ...

... some taupe coloured scaffolding?

It has to go under my clothes and be easily identifiable as a fat suit by a thin friend who comes round and decides to play dress down with my stuff.

On TV the other night, when Trinny and Susannah were trying to undress the nation, they took it on their size 10 selves to address the “problem” we plus size girls have finding things to fit us.

An hour in, it seems all you have to do to look good is buy something to suit your shape but which won’t zip up. But, once you get it home and you slip on your fat hiding body armour, hey presto, you’re suddenly deliciously curvy rather than disappointingly doughy.

But where does the blubber go? It doesn’t just disappear when you’re wearing a safety harness, does it?

It’s got to go somewhere, either out the top or down the bottom. And I’m guessing that the poor dab who was paraded around in it for the show now has size 786 feet. The irony there, of course, is that she’d get that size anywhere, but the shop would have to phone around to get the shoes in wide fitting.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to go out feeling that if I blew off, my head would come off my shoulders because my underwear is too constricting.

But that’s what T&S are suggesting we all do if we want to look good, but definitely not on the way to being naked

I’ve got to take their word for it because their wizard undies, which double as passion killing thigh trimmers and all-in-one belly busters, will slim me down, knock a dress size off me and pull me in and stick me out in all the right places.

I should also imagine that it would be impossible to eat with all that inward pressure going on, let alone worrying about not coughing while standing and not having enough give to cross your legs.

Oh go on, think about it.

Good underwear is one thing, but knowingly putting on something so ugly, so shape changingly dishonest, would be like wearing a second sausage skin of false hope. You take it off, and you’re still, well, you.

We know that people will do the most extreme things to look good because there’s that old saying that when you look good you feel good, right?

But I want to feel at the very least comfortable in my own skin, rather than a cheat in a reinforced, industrially knitted fantasy version of me.

I don’t know about you, but my blood needs to circulate otherwise I get light headed. And we all know that when that happens, you reach for SUGAR. See? Even pants can be evil.

As for what you wear on top, the skinny do-gooders tried to convince us we can all look great as long as we know what suits us.

Blimey, who knew! I expect their next piece of wisdom will be about how to lose weight by eating less and moving around more. God, they’re good.

They started their show by complaining that not enough clothes are made in big sizes, and that it was up to the shops to just make stuff, well, bigger.

Half way through, they’d changed their minds though and decided that, no, us biggies need special attention from the designers because, let’s face it, we’re never going to get away with Topshop patterns put through a photocopier and scaled up 200%.

No way! Really? And there was me thinking all outsized women can get away with waistcoats and ruffles and pencil skirts.

I don’t think even putting that little lot on top of magic (you’re going to like it, but not a lot if you’ve actually got to breathe) knickers would make the thin look work on everyone.

At some point, we’re going to have to come to the realisation that there has to be an outsize section in “normal” shops, rather than tokenist enlargements of skinny styles which are never going to work on women with bellies and boobs and bums anyway.

Magic underwear? Best avoided, unless you want to pull rabbits out of your arse.

Rin has had new pictures taken ...

... this time by my Significant (thin, but rapidly getting a belly) Other.
She enjoyed the experience, she told me, and I think that’s largely because she’s not self-conscious.
When I got home after my super snapper had been playing at being David Bailey I found that he’d kept his lights and backdrop – and crucially his camera – out.
“Come on, have some new pictures taken,” he gently coaxed. You haven’t had any done for a while.”
As gently as I could I reminded him that there was a reason for this – fat face, fat in the face, fat of face – which he gently swept aside with some mumblings about me talking nonsense.
And then came the clincher, my “aha” moment which I’d dutifully hidden  in my Think About It Later mental store cupboard.
“You can’t hide on the telly. You won’t be able to do your show hiding in a bin liner, will you?” With his point taken, a mild panic set in.
And then, just like I can convince myself that eating an entire tube of low fat Pringles is OK because, well, they’re low fat, with lightning speed I justified my involvement away with a nimble: “Nah, I can do telly. No problem.
“I won’t care what I look like because I just won’t watch it when it’s on.” Easy as that.
Let me clarify the “do telly” line there. I’ve been asked to front a one-hour prime time documentary on BBC One (that’s BBC ONE!) which starts filming next weekend (that’s NEXT WEEKEND!).
Funnily enough, it’s not going to be me looking at the intricacies of the credit crunch, high profile politics, adrenaline junkie holidays or how to Make Me A Supermodel Tonteg.
It’s going to be me blathering on about what I know best.
Specifically, it’s about the psychology of food and the nature of the leak in my head.
But where I say “my head” there, what I’m actually talking about is the 13 million other Brits who are also on a permanent diet and who can’t quite stick to it.
The serious bit of Fix My Fat Head, the show’s working title, is to illustrate, via me and my insecurities and often wonky view of the world, that for many, obesity (how I hate that word) is an outward sign of a fundamentally dysfunctional relationship with food stemming from entrenched psychological and emotional issues.
 Phew! I’ve found all you can eat buffets easier to negotiate.
We can  acknowledge that  anorexia and bulimia are psychological diseases – but it still seems radical to state that overeating and obesity are often rooted in psychological disorder.  
The bods who commissioned it want me to dive (luckily not wearing a two-piece)  into the heart of this controversy,  to show that it’s invariably not what we eat but why we eat which causes so much rumpus.
I’m looking forward to doing it, but I  do have a niggling Why Don’t You? worry, about people  switching off their television sets, going out and doing something less boring instead.
I’ve no trouble with baring my soul – but, as I mentioned, having to look at myself while doing it is another matter.
But maybe the thought of 10 million (gulp) or more people watching me do it, might be encouragement enough to think that I really am fine, just the way I am.
Then again...

SUMMER…

... don’t you just hate it? Not only do you have to contend with restaurants trying to foist seasonal fruits, fresh avocado and petit salad of Japanese Shiso cress on you when what you really want is a big lump of sirloin steak and buttered mash, you’ve got to endure everyone jabbering on about their holidays.
And if you’re a girl, this is always littered with talk about the B word. No, not beef, baklava or bacon baps – but bikinis.
For someone like me, a size 24 and growing, the whole notion of cutting back on carbs and counting calories all year round in order to squeeze my bits and bobs into what basically amounts to underwear as your outerwear while your flesh is womballing free for a fortnight, makes this the season of unpalatable conversation.
If you’re happy and you know it but you really don’t want to show it off in a bikini, summer can be a wash out for the foodie who’s gone too far in the game of indulgence to bare all in a blaze of washboard bellied glory.
I learned a long time ago that I didn’t have the kind of shape – round is a shape, right? – that was made for indulging in fun in the sun (unless that included an all-you-can-eat deal in a five star hotel in the fabled land of Chunky, a place where you didn’t have to undress for dinner).
While normal-sized friends of mine with an appetite for looking good rather than feeling sated and elated would start exercising portion control at least six months before a holiday, nothing would change for me.
Sure, I’d spend loads of time thinking about what it would be like to finally learn to say no to seconds and thirds and trim down to a reasonable size, one which could fit into a bikini and not run the risk of Greenpeace dragging me back into the water if I went onto the beach. But rational thought sometimes doesn’t taste that nice.
Of course I could have gone on girlie trips abroad, one where photographic evidence shows my pals looking divine sipping Margaritas by the pool (Tenerife) while sucking in their tummies (Magaluf) and making a meal (hello?!) out of sucking bits of fruit (Santa Ponsa). But frankly, I don’t have that much puff or patience with peeling.
Realising that having what food I wanted was far more important to me than trying to look like a Baywatch reject, I struck a novel deal with myself from a very early age.
No longer would I spend months of my dieting life struggling to feel more than I am (but not in the hip/thigh ratio, thank you very much) to try to fit into a bather.
I’d go for pure and unadulterated, guilt-free indulgence instead, to a place where you could stuff yourself silly while fully clothed, in mittens, a balaclava and elasticated trousers if necessary.
And in terms of food – look away now if you’re of a delicate nature or were born in the Windy City – I found it in America, where you can get all-you-can-eat buffets on tap as well as on the cheap, and your nails done while you’re waiting for the beef for your burger to stop mooing.
If we are what we eat, then I’m a steak and curly fries girl, piled high in a bid to satisfy the devilishly Desperate Dan side of Han; I’m melted cheese with burny bits skulking on the edges, pleading with me to pick at them. I’m hot pretzels on a cold day, strawberry cheesecake at any time, all-day breakfasts at midnight and always a stack of pancakes short of full.
I’m not a bikini babe – well, you can’t be, can you, if you’re someone whose idea of a fashionable two-piece is fried eggs followed by chips?
I am what you’d call a comfort eater, someone whose pleasure comes not from exquisite cuisine but in real soul food, only with less beans and gumbo, especially when feeding the Judith Chalmers wanderlust in me.
I’ll never forget my first visit to a diner in the US – they had Heinz tomato sauce on the table.
I don’t mean some sachet of a poor imitation of it which is what I’d always found in restaurants in other countries. But the proper, full-fat, sweet, sticky, gorgeous bloody stuff, the juice which transcends cultural difference and squirts a liberal dollop of Home over posh nosh, wherever you are in the world.
In America, the portions are huge, the taste incredible, the dessert menus straight from the fantasy scene of the cinema banquet in my mind.
And you never have to wipe sand from in between your toes to get at it or walk around in your smalls.
My options on my last trip to neon-coated paradise included dough well done with cow to cover (that’s buttered toast to carb virgins), a bowl of birdseed (cereal), a glass of drag one through Georgia to go (cola with chocolate syrup) with Noah’s boy on bread (ham sandwich) served up with a 100 watt smile by the soup jockey (waitress).
I just love the way size really, really matters, as mountains of finger lickin’ badness which taste so good are dished up in that blasé, almost celebratory way kids (or was it just me?) imagine table-buckling party food in Heaven would look.
I couldn’t live in America – I’d be dead by now, crushed under the weight of a dream sequence of me cavorting with a load of Zeppelins in a fog while trying to make room for a certain Eve with a mouldy lid (That’s sausage and mash, followed by apple pie with a slice of cheese on top if you’re interested).
Some would say, of course, that there’s no need to go to America to eat like an American.
Yankee cuisine can be replicated in any British kitchen by mixing peanut butter with mashed up bananas, ladling it on toast and deep-frying it in lard until golden brown.
Mmm, just like Elvis used to make. And it didn’t do him any harm.
Well, did it?

I AM officially too fat ...

... to shop in M&S. They go up to a size 24 – you know you’re EXTRA special when your size is the only one in the shop which is differentiated with a light blue hanger tag.
But it seems I’m not that special anymore. Just fat.
It made me wonder how I got from where I was two years ago – two and a half stone lighter and feeling like I was on the way to finding my better self, to say nothing about seeing my feet for the first time since 1971 – to where I am now.
And that’s a bit depressed if I’m being honest. But down that I may be, I’m still not doing much about it. And that’s the worst thing of all to consider.
Not even my disastrous, too big to look nice shopping spree wasn’t enough to shock me into activity. I kind of feel resigned. And I hate, hate, hate it.
The trouble with honesty, however, is that people either appreciate you for it or they think you could shut up and do something about why you’re blue in the first place.
My mother has a saying for it. She says you simply have to “pick yourself up and shake yourself down”.
I have a saying for it too. But I can’t repeat it in polite company.
Angelina Jolie doesn’t have a problem with being candid, and you never hear of anyone telling her to shut up.
People just coo: “It’s great that someone so beautiful should be so open. It’s amazing, with some of her past troubles, she is willing to share her darkest hours with the world so that people can learn from her mistakes.”
Me? Well, I just get letters from people telling me to either have more sex to burn up more calories (I had an offer from a pensioner with nice penmanship just the other week, Han fans), others banging (no pun intended) on about something to do with me shutting up and getting a life, or women (and some men, it has to be said) totally relating with my life’s dilemmas.
Sadly, I don’t get letters from personal trainers who live near Caerphilly or surgeons who want to practise gastric banding on a willing participant.
(I’d have it done in a heartbeat by the way. But my nearest and dearest won’t let me. And as much as I can cope with disappointing myself, I can’t bear putting them through the worry. Besides, isn’t it cheating? As if I’d care!)
But not Angelina. She doesn’t garner such derision.
She can admit to taking a rainbow of drugs – “I’ve done just about every drug possible. Coke, heroin, ecstasy, LSD, everything. The worst effect, for me, was pot. I felt silly and giggly, and I hate feeling like that. I remember taking LSD before I went to Disneyland. I started thinking about Mickey Mouse being a short, middle-aged man in a costume who hates his life. Those drugs can be dangerous if you don’t go into it positively” – and being a bit of a wild child, pre Brad Pitt and her mother earth look. But still people are forgiving.
It must be the lips.
The new mum of twins has said in the past that she’s happy to share the shape of her inner demons with the world as she thinks it’ll help others and she isn’t ashamed of being human and all that entails.
(Although she’s apparently asking for £5m for the first pictures of her twins, with the money going to charity.)
They’re not so understanding of a girl from the Rassau with “issues” though.
I’m no Jolie, it has to be said. Neither am I particularly jolly these days.
I am, however, still eating, still feeling ugly (there, I’ve said it) ... and still sharing.
And still wishing you could buy patience by the pound next to the pork pies in Tesco.

Can a hypnotherapist find the off switch ...

... for Hannah’s corned beef and crisp sandwich cravings?

I was desperate, desperate, yes desperate, to be upbeat here this week. I even thought of practising “nice” in the mirror.

But that would involve looking at myself and I simply couldn’t face it. Oops, there I go again. See, can’t help the slump or my nature.

But can you? I read something the other day which gave me hope.

I considered it while sucking on a Mini Milk.

“I’ve always been curious about what it is that allows some people to change the course of their lives, despite long odds,” writes Tom Shroder in the Washington Post.

“As far as weight loss goes, I was one of the lucky ones. Thirty to 40 pounds overweight in my early teens, I was regularly taunted by schoolyard bullies.

“Something humiliating must have occurred on the day I came home too depressed to do anything but lie on the couch and brood. I sank down deep into the cushions and felt sorry for myself. Then I began to get angry.

“I hated being the fat boy in school. I hated the way I looked in the mirror. And, more than anything else, I hated the feel of the swollen belly I carried everywhere I went.

“And then I decided: I didn’t want to be fat anymore. I refused to be fat anymore.

“From that moment, I simply did what it took to lose the belly. I changed the way I ate, changed the way I thought about food. It wasn’t particularly difficult. There was never any doubt in my mind that the pain of changing was insignificant compared with the pain of remaining the way I was.

“Losing weight is one thing. All I had to do was talk myself out of eating too many French fries.”

So, it’s that simple, is it? Deciding one day to stop eating chips? Thinking – no, believing – that you can be more than you are by weighing less than you do today? Refusing – his word, not mine – to be dissatisfied?

But how do you change the way you feel about yourself?

The other day I decided to get hypnotised to see if I could think myself thinner.

I met this wonderful man, Simon Richards DCHyp, MBCSHA, GQHP (and quite sexy really) at his Corpus Clinical Hypnotherapy offices in Bridgend.

I went after feeling that I’d exhausted every diet known to mankind, save the skimmed milk and Bovril one (yup, I’ve been reading up on gastric bands).

I also knew of a few people who’ve gone to see him who are still reaping the rewards.

I went with an open mind, and huge hope that he’d find something in my subconscious noodle that would flip a switch, make my self-esteem fatter and my need to self-medicate with carbs slimmer.

He told me that a small number of people don’t succumb to hypnotherapy, but they are usually those who don’t really want it and who fail to relax or let their mind become open to positive suggestions.

My mother had suspicions that I wouldn’t “go under” as she put it.

“The constitution of an ox, you’ve got my love,” she said to me. I stopped short of asking her if she was confusing constitution with bottom size.

I thought about this while nibbling on six chicken nuggets and a strawberry milkshake as I waited to go in, convincing myself that it would be my last meal of rubbish (idiot, idiot, bloody idiot!). I tried to relax, honest I did, but all I could think about while he was trying to suggest wonderful new ways of thinking to me was whether or not he was looking at my fat belly.

There I was, sat in this fancy rocking chair, and all I could concentrate on was my belly, my boobs, my short-sleeved top, my chin, why I had those nuggets, my flat hair, that obnoxious, charmless man, stage hypnotist Kenny Craig from Little Britain saying to me: “Look at your thighs, at your thighs, the thighs, the thighs, not around the thighs, the thighs, don’t look around the thighs… click… you’re under.”

Under. Rhymes with thunder. Yeah, you’ve got it, thunder thighs.

Hypnotherapy, and diets, work on other people. I’ve seen the evidence in my own office.

So why am I so resistant to thinking I can change, even though it’s the one things I want most in the world (apart from McDonald’s extending their breakfast menu past 10.30am)?

Stop doing things I like in order to do things I’d don’t, maybe.

One, two, three… and I’m back in the room. I’m just thankful it’s not in the all-you-can-eat buffet of my mind today.

WE’D only got so far into our mini break ...

... as the Merthyr to Brecon roundabout when I started crying. I don’t know what it is about me and tears lately, but we seem to be best pals.

Significant (thin) Other was giving me a row – well, when I say “row” what I mean was a shake of the head, followed by some finger twitching and mild foot tapping.

Someone fancy was on the radio, a name which I hoped he wouldn’t recognise. But the man who knows what I’m thinking before my thoughts have begun, jumped on the name and started dancing around on the connection between us, saying that he was thrilled, thrilled, thrilled that I would soon be on the same celebrity panel as posh paws on Radio Wales, mixing it up with the great and the good.

Then I broke the news that I wouldn’t be going, that I’d made up an excuse (it was valid and genuine but I could have wriggled) not to go.

He was, to put it mildly, disappointed, rumbling on about the way he gets frustrated because I throw opportunities away with the dexterity of an Olympian.

“Why’ve you done it this time?” he asked me. “The Same Old S*** is it? I’m clueless as to why you have such a low opinion of yourself. You’re fabulous! I wish you’d snap out of it, you’re stopping yourself from doing so much.”

The SOS in question is my subterranean self-esteem. It’s an odd beast, fed on an abundance of carbohydrates and crusty rolls, Yorkshire puddings, Boots Shapers meals and cheese and onion pasties to shut it up.

Frankly, it all comes down to feeling unsightly. I’m not embarrassed to say this is what I think or feel. Nobody’s going to point at me, are they? Nope. And I’m not lying or saying I’ve had a gastric band. Now THAT would be something worth shouting about.

To be honest, I’m so familiar with thinking this way it’s become the norm for me.

And I think it’s all to do with the fact that I feel fat. And ugly. Fugly! Well would you look at that. Copyright Jones.

It’s not the kind of Fugly that comes from having a spot on the end of your nose, the wrong kind of shoes on or a flat hair day.

It’s an incapacitating feeling that leaves me kind of helpless. My beast of burden doesn’t stop me being who I am, or going to work or chopsing or arguing or thinking big thoughts.

Instead it’s a silent thwarter that has turned me into the most self-conscious and unsociable bugger.

And the worst thing of all? I’m entirely responsible. Me. Fugly Jones. I know it, but I can’t shake loose of it.

Most of the time, it isn’t a problem for me as I just live with it. It just IS.

But it becomes an issue when I’m asked to do stuff by friends, when I’m invited places, when I’m asked to go on a panel and just be me. And I just want to say no as it’s the easier option. Because then, I don’t have to worry about what to wear, or anticipate the fall-out by well-intentioned others who simply don’t get this side of me and tussle with me when I say I’d rather not do something.

I was thinking about this while sitting in a café in New Quay, just past Plwmp. Talk about being haunted by your body image.

Convincing myself that I think better while either smoking a cigarette and drinking a latte or stuffing my face, I took the opportunity while S(t)O was off taking pictures to order a bacon roll on the sly (it was less than an hour after breakfast after all) to help with my mental ruminating.

I was about to dig into my notion of Fugly (and a crispy bacon roll), thinking that if nobody saw me doing it I wasn’t really eating, when he came round the corner just as the waitress was delivering my sneaky treat.

As ever, S(t)O didn’t chastise me, or venture any kind of opinion in fact – I got in there first anyway.

But it all went horribly wrong because not only was I caught out, when I opened the roll to check on the fat content it had butter on it. Butter! Who the hell puts butter on a bacon roll? It should be a mortal sin.

So he ate it, enjoying every mouthful as it didn’t taste of guilt – while my interpretation of it backfired, leaving me empty in more ways than one again.

I avoided Plwmp on the way back home. And butter on bacon rolls as soon as I got in. But the jury’s still out on whether I can shake off Fugly.

I’VE just looked up the word ‘holistic’.

Apparently it has something to do with ‘emphasising the importance of the whole and the interdependence of its parts’.

And there I was thinking it was all to do with vitamins and yoga. Shows how much I know.

The reason I’m showing so much interest in the word, now firmly in my head illuminated under a spotlight of hope, is because Fern Britton has put her remarkable weight loss down to taking an ‘holistic approach’ to it.

To be honest, I’m still not sure what it means. It’s a word that means something in the abstract to me, like low-fat cheese.

Yet it seems somewhat out of reach. Whatever, it’s worked for Fern who’s looking like Little Britton now, despite looking fabulous before.

Fern, who was reportedly concerned that at her biggest she was an unhealthy role model for other women, has quietly introduced a new fitness regime and eating plan, avoiding faddy diets in favour of – yes, you guessed it, an holistic approach.

Oh, and Ryvita. And cycling.

As such, she’s slimmed down from a size 20 – some papers have taken bets and put her at a size 24 – to what looks like a trim 14.

And how does she feel about it, about achieving what I’ve been struggling to do since the day dot?

Surprisingly unsmug and unfazed.

“I don’t feel any different. Genuinely, no different at all. People expect me to be saying something else, but no,” she says.

However Fern, 50, saw the years approaching the Big Five O as the turning point in her life and the motivation behind trying to lose weight.

“For me it took a long time to feel happy about myself and to know who I was,” she admits.

“I’m a late starter so it’s only in the last two or three years that I’ve felt happy with who I am. I think it’s to do with happiness in my personal life, feeling loved and loving someone in return. To feel the love between you is fantastic.”

I feel loved, and adored, it has to be said.

So I couldn’t help but wonder whether if my Significant (thin) Other started to tell me my ‘at home’ look of scabby tracksuit trousers, equally scabby top with bleach marks, no make-up and no bra possibly wasn’t my best, I may be spurred on more.

There’s a lot to be said for contentment and somebody thinking you’re fabulous, flat hair and inflated bits ’n’ all.

Back to Fern: “I think when you get older, more mature, you can see the chapters that have happened to you.

“In my 20s I was working and, unbeknown to me, creating some form of career ladder. I didn’t know that at the time, I was just thinking, ‘Oh, this is OK.’

“Then in my 30s I was married to my first husband and had my children.”

Fern has twins from her first marriage, and two daughters from her second to celebrity chef Phil Vickery. After the birth of twins Jack and Harry (now 14) she suffered crippling post-natal depression.

She says: “I had the most terrible post-natal depression that manifested itself in deep unhappiness. Then I think because I felt I had to be strong and protective for the children, I got larger to feel stronger.”

She later had a daughter, Grace, now 11, and then six-year-old Winnie with Vickery, whom she married in 2007.

But in her late 40s she began to consider her weight, which means that I have less than four years to go before my big epiphany. Yet I wish it were tomorrow.

Fern says: “I thought: ‘I’m not going to have any more children, they’re safe and secure, they don’t need me to be the lioness looking after them, so let’s not perpetuate this.

“I thought, I can be like this for the rest of my life or think, 50, that’s interesting, let’s change.

“I wanted to do something for ‘me’ because being a wife and mum and working, you have no time in the day for yourself.”

And, about two years ago, she started cycling.

On reading this, I went to Halfords on Saturday. I didn’t get further than the burger van parked outside. But my mind was willing at the very least, even if my belly was craving fried onions.

Fern saw an advert in the paper for fertility expert and television scientist Lord Robert Winston’s charity Women For Women, which raises money to help improve health services for mothers and mothers-to-be.

She says: “It was a 400km cycle ride in Egypt, spread across five days. Last year I did India and this year I’m doing Cuba.”

She trains on a 14-gear hybrid bike three days a week, for an hour each session. As the event gets closer, she then does two consecutive days of about 40 miles each day and towards the end 10 or 12 miles a day.

She does that AND presents This Morning AND looks after her kids. I couldn’t find the time with a map.

Perhaps living with a chef makes it easier, having low- calorie meals cooked for you.

But Fern says: “Being married to a chef is like being married to a builder. Your house is the one that doesn’t get any attention! And so although Phil cooks beautifully, and the six of us sit down to a family supper together, it’s very often just a normal family meal.”

She confesses to not having lost her sweet tooth though.

“I adore sugar, that’s my weakness. I could eat chocolate all day long. Well not all day... These days instead of buying a bar I’ll buy a small bag of chocolate buttons.”

Losing the weight has taken years off her and she’s much more confident – light years away from her depressed time.

She says: “Even Jonathan Ross joked: ‘You’re getting too skinny’, which was very sweet of him, and my daughter’s told me my bosoms are sinking slowly, but those were the only comments!”

So as Mam Jones says – someone who’s lost five stone too despite being physically challenged – if Fern can do it, I can too.

Maybe another trip to Halfords, with nose pinchers on, is on the cards tomorrow.

That ticker thing on BBC News 24 started to roll around the screen.

... With my glasses off, I’m not much cop at reading it, so I rely on my early-morning headline fix from my eagle-eyed and snake-hipped Other.

“Oh, someone’s got bulimia… must be someone important to make the serious news,” he said at just a nod after 8.30am on Sunday.

“I think it said they had it for 10 years, or something like that. It’s gone on for quite a bit, then.”

Thinking that it was going to mention some starlet or other, I slipped on my goggles and waited for the tracker to run around again.

And when it came on that John Prescott was the one who had come out and declared he had an eating disorder, I nearly choked on my tiramisu.

Yes, tiramisu. Lodger Hiya Love couldn’t find strawberries when he went shopping on Saturday, so bought me tiramisu as a treat – in the same way that you’d by an alcoholic a vodka treat. It’s not advisable.

There was some left over from the night before, so I sneakily went into the kitchen, ostensibly to get a cup of tea.

But when I opened the fridge for the milk, the Italian stallion of a dessert started winking at me and it packs quite a punch, even at 9am.

So I’m secretly eating it while my toast, well, toasts, and my slimline, controlled, lovely Other is in the living room with a bowl of muesli and low-fat yoghurt (freak) listening to the story about Prescott’s problems.

I couldn’t help notice the irony as the newsreader babbled on about the former Deputy Prime Minister’s “odd” eating habits while I’m licking coffee- soaked sponge from the corners of a plastic container behind the kitchen wall for breakfast.

But I’m nothing if not original.

Anyway, back to the big P. It takes a brave man – a brave anyone – to admit that they have a problem with food. It’s so readily available, isn’t it?

You HAVE to have it. It’s everywhere. It’s a necessity. It’s necessary. And then it becomes a necessary evil. Just ask John.

He joins a long list of big names who have spoken out about their troubled relationship with grub.

Princess Diana was perhaps the most high-profile bulimic but others in the public eye, people who you’d probably label as “sorted”, have admitted it’s been an issue for them.

Stand up and be counted Sharon Osborne, Russell Brand, Paul Gascoigne, Geri Halliwell, and Elton John. All over- achievers who appear outwardly confident and successful but who are out of control around kitchen cupboards.

“People normally associate it with young women – anorexic girls, models trying to keep their weight down, or women in stressful situations, like Princess Diana,” JP writes in his autobiography, which is called Prezza, Pulling No Punches.

“Then, of course, with my weight, people wouldn't suspect it.

“You could say I wasn't a very successful bulimic, in that my weight didn't really drop.”

Mr Prescott, who once poured baked beans onto a curry – like who hasn’t done pregnancy cravings without a bun in the oven? – said eating became his “main pleasure” (tick that box, Han) and at times of stress he would seek comfort in eating vast quantities of food (and off she goes again).

He said that until a year ago he would “stuff his face” with packets of digestive biscuits, trifles and fish and chips, and would wash it down with condensed milk (strike three, but strawberry milkshake is more my pleasure).

When the pressure really got to him, he would drink bottles of vodka (thank God I’m teetotal or I fear my liver would be pickled).

On trips to his local Chinese restaurant in his Hull constituency, he said he could eat his way through the entire menu.

(I can’t stand duck or sweet‘n’sour, so we’re OK here.)

And then he would vomit it all back up to purge his body.

And that’s where the similarities end for me.

I’m sure I’m not alone when I admit to giving head room to the idea of bingeing and then making myself sick, as if sticking two fingers down your throat is like pressing the rewind button on your stereo.

As if by doing it, the last curry/baked bean combo for breakfast doesn’t exist.

My admission, therefore, is that I feel bulimic, but without the retching. I simply couldn’t do it.

I bet many of you reading this have mild forms of bulimia too, and have also succumbed to serious comfort eating, or getting into the habit of de-stressing with a Mars Bar.

So don’t feel too judgemental of old Prezza.

Because if I liked baked beans or curry or condensed milk, things could be very different for me today.

A TEXT came through on the train ...

... It was from Justin, my former best friend, brother-like figure, the one who I could stuff for Britain with and not give a damn.

Do you have a friend like that? You know, one that allows you to be yourself, in all your colours, no matter how dark and shady and self-destructive they appear?

Justin was my FBF, my Fat Best Friend. We shared everything, just not chocolate, the two of us coming to the conclusion from a very early age that we are both weak around any M&S food halls, and rubbish at portion control.

It started with chicken in a basket in the ’70s, and we’ve never looked back (or over our bellies).

We ate fast and lived precariously when it came to Sunday dinners on other days of the week, pizzas from Geoff’s in Ebbw Vale and extra onion rings down the country (that’s valleys for a posh meal in a Crickhowell pub, for those north of Abertillery).

But unlike our love for carbs, we drifted apart.

One thing has remained steadfast though, and that’s our battle with ourselves and our honesty with each other when talking about it on the rare occasions that we chew our respective fat.

Justin is the only person I know who would never, ever, ever judge me about my take on body image, the notion of which is wrapped up like a hot chicken fajita with how I feel I look.

On the text the other day, he said he was once again trying to stay on the Straight and (let’s be frank, it’s never gonna happen) Narrow by watching what he ate.

Bemoaning the fact that I feel so unsightly that I now measure 38-26-36 (and that’s just the left arm) and therefore eat to comfort my unease, my FBF was able to top it.

No, not with melted cheese and a side of nachos, but honest to goodness fast fat facts.

“That’s nothing,” he said.

“You’re talking to someone who can’t walk up Queen Street without having two breakfasts. One in McDonald’s and then a bacon bap in BHS. I was so depressed by my lack of will power by the time I got to work, I self-medicated with M&Ms.”

Oh, how I know the feeling.

It turns out, though, that up until this slide into the calorific abyss he had been trying to be good, as per his second text.

“So I went home and did some lunges, at least tried to do them anyway.

“In my pants, as you can’t get Jabba the Hutt sized pantaloons in JB Sports.

“I managed three before my back gave out. It took three cans of Deep Heat to get me out of bed the next morning.”

So Justin, like every failed or yo-yoing dieter I know, thought to hell with it and the difficulty or trying to be good and nose-dived into a nosebag of breakfasts.

I may have trouble counting how many pieces of bread I’m allowed a day, but I don’t have any trouble relating to this story.

When we were little (there’s a laugh) we used to spend hours drawing up diet and exercise plans, convincing ourselves that if we were thinking about it we were one step towards sorting it out once and for all.

Thirty very odd years later, we’re both bigger than ever, and still talking about it, still trying to come up with some plan we can follow.

But for all our brains, we don’t seem to realise that it kind of defeats the object to ponder the uphill challenge while dipping garlic bread into bolognese sauce.

Another text came through yesterday morning which read, “Awful day so far. So hungry, I ate dessert from the bin lid. Fancy going to the gym? We can do it this time, Han.”

Yes, I thought to myself, we can. If only we were just that little bit smaller and that little bit smarter to get out of our own ways.

And just like I imagine my scales would say if it was able to talk back at me, I think our story is forever To Be Continued.

"My friend has just lost four stone in weight ..,”

... said a work colleague.

With my interest immediately awakened, I asked her what miracle diet she found so that I could pinch it and follow it and worship at her heels.

“Didn’t eat,” replied my chum, matter-of-factly, stuffing her fissog with toast.

(It took all I had not to lick the butter off her chin.)

“She was only allowed to drink water and take these tablets from the doctor. Did it for 100 days, bang on.

“Cost her £76 a week though for the pills.

“Only now she wants to try something different as she says she’s not losing it fast enough.”

Not only was I staggered to learn she was getting fat-busting pills from the doctor which were prescribed to be taken with an ocean of water – hello? I don’t think this type of quack can be found on the NHS – I couldn’t believe that she hadn’t put anything in her gob for 100 days.

I’ve known girls in work to “fast” for a bit – or detox as they fancily call it – which involves nuts, seeds, hot lemon “tea” and a plateful of smugness to go.

They’re always all slimmies too, the kind of girl who needs a drip feed of lard rather than drip-feeding themselves rabbit food, all in the name of cleansing.

And there I was thinking that cleansing was just something you do after taking your make-up off. Silly me.

But not eating for 100 days?

That takes real dedication, and real stupidity really.

Putting the moral/medical argument aside, what kind of life would you have if you denied yourself anything, let alone something?

The basic rule of thumb for anyone who wants to lose weight can be summed up in a small sentence with big meaning: If you eat less and move more, you’re going to lose weight. Simple eh?

Yeah, but not if you make a meal out of it like I do.

Anyway, back to the water drooler in the midst of a calorific drought ...

My reluctant admiration for said faster was tested when the story teller described her as thus: “Anyway, she was huge. Really fat. I couldn’t get over the size of her the last time I saw her.

“And then she lost all this weight and looks, well, okay now. She’s still fat, mind.

“But nice fat, if you know what I mean.”

Nice fat. Now there’s an idea for an internet site if every I heard one.

I wondered, not for the first time, what “huge, really fat” looks like. And did it resemble me. Sorry, but I can never resist.

So I asked her to quantify it.

“Oh you know....” she said, eyeing me up in that most terrifying of ways where you know what’s coming and are bracing yourself for the insult.

There followed the shoulder shrug/head to one side combo, which seems to be international language of “lumper”.

“A bit like you. Only...”

What? Only what, I wondered, as the shrug/nod mish-mash took over her upper half once again.

Better looking? Fatter?

Bigger? Smarter?

Smaller? Taller?

Married with seven kids?

WHAT? Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, shrug, nod, sigh.

Go on, say fatter. Go on! You know you want to.

“She’s blonde.”

I breathe a sigh of relief until the Give Us A Clue type action jabs at me once again as friend sucks her buttery fingers as if to punctuate the point.

“Blonde, and smaller. But what she’s done proves you can do it too, doesn’t it?

“Shall I ask her the name of her doctor, Han?”

I wanted to tell her to stick the name where the sun don’t shine but, lady that I am, I just said I didn’t think the “plan” was for me as I don’t like water, and have a fondness for chewing.

Oh, how I laughed; and, oh, how she scowled, the word “defeatist” being swallowed with her last crumb of toast.

“That’s where you’re going wrong then,” she added.

“Denial is the way you want to go. Works every time. And what’s 100 days of not eating but drinking loads of water out of your life anyway?”

A lot of missed chicken kebabs, I thought. And too many trips to the toilet.

On Sunday, I spent £355.87 on clothes.

Yes, you read it right. Off I trundled to Box 2 in Cardiff, and blew the lot in less than an hour.

It was sale time, and let me tell you that I got loads for that money.

I know it’s a huge amount to blow on one shopping spree but in my defence I never buy anything. And I mean anything.

Honestly, I own about two pairs of shoes, three pairs of black trousers, a few T-shirts and a cardigan, and that’s my staple for everyday wear.

I’ve got about four really swishy things for really special occasions, but largely my wardrobe is lacking in anything interesting.

Maybe it’s because, as an official lumper, I can’t go into Primark and the like to stock up on “essentials”, like some trousers and playtime tops.

So I get a bit depressed about it, and end up in the same old comfort zone. You understand, right?

On Sunday, though, I woke up feeling like I was on the top of the world looking down on creations and other such saccharine sentiments worthy of a Carpenters song.

So I took the bull by the horns – well, I took the car out of the garage – dusted off my credit card and decided to spoil myself.

The last time I did that it was the 12th of never (and as we all know, that’s a long, long time), as disinterest buoyed by a sense of dieting failing has been the devil on my shoulder for so long now.

On Sunday, he must have converted, as the little blighter seemed to be having a day of rest.

Box 2 is normally out of my price range but on the weekend I got about 12 things on sale and hyper marked down prices; I’m talking thick brocade coat down from £200 to £100, linen tops from £70 to £20 each, a long jacket for £10 that was, once upon a time, £99.

Somewhere else that’s out of normal people’s reach is Anna Scholz.

Remember that time Trinny and Susannah “made over” Jo Brand and she appeared on the red carpet looking a knockout in brown velvet?

That was Anna’s clothes.

Anyway, she’s sent me details of her latest collections, clothes for the big bird which imbue a strong sense of glamour and feature fabulous tailoring, detailing and colour palettes.

The only place in Wales you can get them is at Zoloko in Narberth, but she designs for the Simply Be catalogue (www.simplybe.co.uk).

Her full range is available to buy from her website, www.annascholz.com

Shame I’m all spent out.

"I hated being fat,” she said.

“When I was pregnant I was so big, waddling about, not being able to see my toes unless I contorted and someone held on to my trouser elastic. Fat’s awful. Oh, sorry.”

It was that last word that got me. It was said like it should be, full of remorse and regret and apology. She wasn’t saying she was sorry that she had a baby, she was saying sorry to me because I’m fat. Trust me on this one.

I mean, why else would you explain away your pregnancy like that?

I bet most woman hate what comes with being with bump – the sickness, the swollen ankles, people touching your belly without an invite to the fun house which houses your very own mobile game of Buckaroo.

But what she was really doing was saying I was fat for nine months. I hated it. Oops, you’re fat. Sorry I loathed being what you are. But you understand, right?

Wrong. I don’t understand what it’s like to be pregnant or, like the crux or her argument, walk around in an alien body.

If I was apologising for being her ‘type’, I would now be wearing a size 8.

“I hated being so small. Small’s awful!” There, I said it. Sorry again.

Out she came with it, this little dwt of a woman, and with one word and the accompanying melancholic face she attempted to empathise – oh, now there’s a vile and potentially dangerous verb – with my “predicament” (definitely her word, not mine) by giving me a whole list of why being fat was hellish.

“It just didn’t suit me,” she went on. “I wasn’t made to be big.” (Hey, who was?)

“I was so frustrated not being able to get really nice clothes, wear what I wanted.”

(Have you seen Evan’s new spring/summer collection? I rest my case, love.)

“And I had the sex drive of a castrated gnat.”

(Pillows and hoists and cheese and chive dips. Highly recommended.)

“How do you deal with it?”

(Er……)

Now I would love to say that I told Dwt a few home truths, that I put her in her place, and sent her packing with a copy of my book on the subject (yeah, I’ve got one).

Instead, as usually happens when I’m faced with people’s insensitivity about the F word (and I ain’t talking Fabulous here, or Fried Egg Sandwiches), I didn’t say very much at all.

What could I say anyway? Insensitivity, especially when it comes from a skewed notion of commiseration, is a hard act to swallow (and we all know I don’t usually have much difficulty when it comes to the closing my glottis).

But then came the clincher, a back handed compliment if ever I head one. “It suits you, though. I can’t imagine you any other way. Anyway, it’s great to have my figure back. Oh…. sorry. I shouldn’t presume to know what it’s like to walk in your shoes.” In my case, they’re size 7s, wide fitting, flat and with a springer insole..

Dwt, for all her insensitivity, didn’t think she was being unkind when she first apologised for her fat phobias.

Maybe she was just saying she understood what it was like to be in a body that didn’t suit her.

Yeah, maybe.

There’s always a small, insensitive, pretty little thing inside me itching to get out and experience life on the acceptable side of average.

But just for today I’m shutting the bitch up with chocolate. Luckily for me, daily cravings are also a non-pregnant big girl’s prerogative.

It's all in the face.

It’s a lovely face, fine boned, smiley, with a mouth full of the whitest teeth I think I’ve ever seen.
There’s a mop of bleached blonde hair too, with streaks of white running wild through it, like she’s been sunning herself on Bondi Beach but remembered to lavish herself with Factor 500 at the roots.
Somehow, though, she wishes it wasn’t.
Because, for Betsan Rees, she’d rather have the face of a bulldog licking the sap from a stingy nettle than a great face and big body.
She’s what’s known in polite society as bottom heavy – tiny up top, bigger down below.
Bets cor has always been like it – but now she’s had enough. So to “shame” herself into doing something about it, she allowed a film crew to follow her as she tried to shed the pounds and start living for the moment.
She’s had enough in the past, of course. Like any yo-yo dieter, or woman who has weighed out their self-esteem with the exact amount of cheese all diet plans tell you to have on your toast, she’s lived where she’s felt, to use her words, “that I had a face from Baywatch, and a body from Crimewatch”.
Like me, and possibly like you if you’ve ever had a problem with food or thinking your hip/thigh ratio is what makes you that bad kind of EXTRA special, she’s been up more times than she’s been down. And I’m not talking sunny moods here either.
Bets has been 26 stones at her heaviest, slogging around a 30 plus body topped with that pretty little head.
Instead of feeling fine and accepting at size 16 or 18 or dreamy size 20 (for me at least), she’s self-medicated with ice-cream, chocolate and the ability to buy bigger trousers on her stylist’s salary.
Yes, to make matters worse, in a fatter, more glamorous life our 32-year-old girl from Trebanos worked as a stylist on the likes of as with American Vogue, the Welsh rugby team, Footballers’ Wives and the film Gladiator, even making a prosthetic belly for the fabled WAGs and having to listen to a size 8 actress on the latter asking our big bottomed gala if their Malteser-like buttocks looked big in a tight toga.
She says that working in that industry, shopping for people who were the size of her left thigh, made her feel “like a kid in a sweet shop who wasn’t allowed to taste a bloody thing”, like some well fed but not so Tiny Tim with their fat cheeks pressed up against the stores that keep big buggers out by keeping sizes tight.
In an emotional documentary that’s on tonight, tues you can watch her as she embarks on a personal journey to conquer both her weight problem and her complex issues with food.
For Bets, food has been both a comfort and a curse because she’s used it as a crutch when times, circumstances and rugby losses have got her down.
She’s not had it easy – her brother and father died early, and her mother has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease.
And she’s found company in the kitchen cupboards, the graveyard of the inch-loss losers.
Weighing 23 stones seven months ago, she felt she’d reached rock bottom after being refused gastric bypass surgery which would involve stapling her stomach, experts claiming that her “circumstances weren’t exceptional”.
At this point, she felt she had no hope as her weight was affecting every area of her life – her social life, her health, her relationships.
Cameras followed her progress as she worked with personal trainer Mered Pryce and clinical psychologist Dr Manon Griffiths.
And now, almost seven stones lighter and still with a penchant for ice-cream but also low impact aerobics twice a day, she feels she may, just may, have broken the cycle once and for all.
At the end of it, she admits that she’s scared of people who now know what she weighs because it’s still considerable; she doesn’t want anyone to judge her on where she’s at now, only how far she’s come.
So let’s get that over and done with now: She’s 16st 13lb. How great is that?
“I really pushed myself during the making of this documentary,” she told me, over a lunch of pasta, pine nuts and two Diet Cokes.
“It was so, so hard.
“I felt I was having a live autopsy, that I was being dissected in public. Now I feel I want to do more to help people in my situation.”
And she’s started by showing that emotions aren’t nuisances which need to be cooled down with Häagen-Dazs.
Or concealed by a lovely face.

I’m in Japan. Or at least my memories are

In my mind’s eye it’s a boiling hot day, I haven’t eaten for the past 10 days – “no fish” translates as “raw tuna with everything, buttie” apparently – my legs are rubbing, my feet are aching and I’m missing home.
I look like a giant in a land of moderates, a starving giant if truth be told.
And although almost a fortnight of rice and bread with the middle bits picked out – there’s no such thing as JUST a crust roll or JUST a sandwich in the land of the rising bile – I feel like you know what.
I started thinking about my trip the other day when faced with a challenge on a management course.
We were told to split up into two groups and build a self- supporting bridge out of some tape and a copy of a newspaper.
We had five minutes to complete the task and then, once built, it had to be big enough for each of us to pass under it.
Got a big a***? Got child- bearing hips? Need a hoist to get you up off the floor?
Yes, if you’re reading this, this challenge was done for all of you, because I was made to do it the other day and I tick all of the above boxes.
Thinking immediately that it was rather hippist as well as bummist and thighist and fatist in general, I semi-seriously asked, “Have you got two copies of the Western Mail because I think I’m going to need extra newsprint to cover my bits and bobs.”
At this point, the trainer looks at me like I’ve got two heads instead of thinking that maybe I had a point.
This lovely lady – and she was lovely, and ample-hipped it has to be said – simply didn’t understand that chopsy, confident me (my other side-line, when I’m not being an insecure nut case) was fearful of letting her THIN team down because they’d not only have to succeed at the challenge (we failed miserably) but build into it the fact that it would need to be bigger because I’d have to get under it as well. Phew!
See the problem?
Well I did, but nobody else seemed to, apart from fellow attendee Christine, fine of bottom and huge on the laughter scale.
So I did that nervous thing where you get all your dirty laundry out in the open before anyone can have a go.
You know what I mean, don’t you?
In this case I pointed out, before anyone had enough time to read last week’s headlines, that I know I’m a big bugger and that because of it we would lose the game and forgo the chocolate prize. Sorry, don’t stand a chance, let’s get it all out in the open now.
It didn’t occur to me that we’d lose anyway because we had the engineering skills of a gnat and all of us were too busy laughing to take it seriously anyway.
But for a while I felt thwarted and depressed, thinking that my inability to get out of my own way or just get on with stuff had once again made me feel like a hindrance, albeit one who does know what to do to make a self-supporting triple decker sandwich without any bits falling out of the sides.
You never got that on the Krypton Factor, did you?
Anyway, these are the reasons why I was thinking about Japan.
Because, despite being as starving and sweaty-thighed as I was this one day on holiday, reaching an alternative state was too much to bear.
I can see myself now, sat in a car at the top of this hill all on my own.
Because the people I’d gone with, those who had that great ability to not be troubled by how other people see them, were in a hot bath. Naked.
That was the dress code.
My options that day were to either go with them, strip off for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, sit in the car on my own, or go for a walk and look around the shops in Kyoto.
I opted to stay in the car, because I knew that if I went down the hill I would need to get back up it.
By the time I’d thought about this conundrum, and worked out the potential sweat/anger factor, my pals had returned, full of the joys of hot springs, telling me that I really should have gone and that golden oldie promise, “Nobody would have paid you any attention anyway.”
My trouble is, I tend to doubt it. Especially when your behind is stuck between a feature and a puzzles page.

WHAT is love?

I’m not talking about big, grand philosophical definitions but smaller, bite-sized portions we can all understand without too much trouble.
I’m going for layman’s terms here.
Like Love is... Patient. Or Kind. Or All-You-Can-Eat buffets for a fiver. Or Fickle. Or Heartbreaking. Or Totally Rubbish, Thank You Very Much.
Or you can have a look at Kim Casali’s Love Is...
cartoons for some more innocent ideas, such as Love Is... Being His Sweater Girl or some such nonsense. Imagine two formerly naked Oompa-Loompas sharing a
kiss of bliss in an oversized cricket jumper and you’ll get my drift.
I got to thinking about the nature of the L-word – and I’m not talking lard here – when I walked into the house the other day and started to float around like some big-bummed Bisto kid.
As soon as I opened the door after a long day avoiding the distant, sweet cry of yum-yums calling my name from the Greggs shop over the road, and trying to convince myself I was feeling full on two yoghurts and 10 menthol fags, all my good work fell by the wayside when the smell of freshly baked something-or-other hit me right in the chops.
My Significant (thin) Other had made (not so) little old me a coffee cake.
From scratch. Gone out and bought two cake tins too, he had.
And all the ingredients. And some ridiculously kitsch cake stand, standing on Betty Boop-like legs, to plop it on.
“Just because I can, and because I thought you’d appreciate it,” he said, by way of explanation to my gaping mouth.
Just because he can. Just because he thought I’d appreciate it. That’s a coffee-flavoured icing “wow” if ever I saw it.
Nobody has ever made me a cake “just because”.
Granted, and considering I’m always battling with my weight and heavier thoughts about how frankly rubbish I am at dieting or staying balanced in my thinking about myself, it’s perhaps not the ideal gift for me.
In dietary terms, it’s the equivalent of handing an alcoholic a pint of lager when they’re having a bad day and sweetening the pill by saying it’s just one for the road.
Just this once. No more tomorrow. It won’t hurt, will it? Cheers now and all the best to you all. As if!
S(t)O stood in the kitchen and, while asking me how my day had gone while making me a cup of tea, multi-tasked his way even deeper into my heart (via my possibly clogged arteries) by cutting me the biggest slice of cake I’d seen since my last naughty dream.
Then he showed me the pair of trousers he’d also made me that afternoon. Yes, you read that right. Significant (too good to be true) Other has taught himself to sew so he can make me bespoke clothes.
The man deserves a medal the size of a frying pan, if you ask me.
But back to the cake. Looking back now, I don’t think it quite touched the sides as it honestly went down in a wave of gratitude, show, awe, admiration – and, yes, love.
Of course, unlike any other sensible person who would possibly have had just the one piece of cake and put the rest away in a tin for the following few days – ha! now there’s a laugh – I stuffed myself full of even more joy while relating my day.
Before I knew it, buoyed up by all the love in the room and feeling so goddamned sexy because my man had made me trousers AND a coffee cake – so I must be delicious JUST AS I AM, went my sugar-infused and obviously confused reasoning – half of it had gone.
Some would say that by even cooking me the cake was akin to killing me with kindness.
In truth, I think they may have a point.
But when somebody takes the time to show you they’re thinking of you, it would be churlish to throw it back in their faces.
Okay, so I could have handled my delight better and had only an intsy bit of what I fancied, balancing my joy with the much bigger picture of trying to be moderate in everything I do.
But on this occasion I think I was justified in testing – and tasting – the limits of Big, Big caffeine-coated Love.
(And eating for six as there’s load of room for belly expansion in my new trousers.)

HOW good does Fern Britton look these days?

I’ve been off work, laid up with a bad back that’s had me knocked out for a week but seriously struggling for the past month, the crippling curse of sciatica rendering me even more useless than usual.

So, like any good patient, I’ve been spending my days watching daytime TV and trying not to test my pain threshold by crawling my way to the kitchen cupboards. Or berate myself too much for not watching what I ate. And you can’t be a perfectionist in short bursts, can you? Then again…

I tried looking up cat training on the internet, but I couldn’t find a page to teach Reggie how to make cheese on toast or go the shops to get me fags and cheese and chive Pringles. Shame.

Anyway, I’m always interested in watching This Morning because I quite like one of TV’s token big birds, Alison Hammond.

I remember interviewing her after she came out of Big Brother 3, surprisingly evicted after the second week.

She answered her phone while trying to fast walk on the treadmill, thinking that getting fit would get her a TV job.

Some bright eyed non-fattist wonder, who obviously knows that people relate more to “real” women on the box than girls from the fun house or Playboy mansion, told her to hop off and just be herself.

So while other BB housemates, including winners, have pretty much disappeared, Alison became the darling of ITV as a celebrity interviewer extraordinaire – and she didn‘t have to lose a pound in the process.

You couldn’t help but like her on the show, as she just seemed to really like herself. She danced, she moved about, she was self-assured, she was sassy, fun loving and lovely looking.

And that comes across on the telly without the aid of lip gloss or an industrial sized pair of belly warmers.

She’s on This Morning with Fern, who seems to have lost about four stones overnight.

As far as I know, she hasn’t talked about what she’s done or signed some big exclusive magazine deal to talk about how she’s “found” herself, which makes me wonder if she’s keeping the big secret of her success – ummm, eat less, move more I wonder? – under wraps for a book.

I’ve scoured the internet for news on her weight loss, but all I can find is speculation, and people talking about her sudden love of cycling and walking the dog.

I got a dog once, with the intention of going for a walk with him every night. Honest. Anyway, he got fat, I got fatter, and neither of us caught a cold from 7pm jaunts around Hengoed in the rain.

He’s now living a life of luxury, complete with three walks a day, with Dad Jones. I’m still dogless, but my breasts are still capable of looking like they’re hanging like a panting poodle’s tongue on a humid July Sunday.

But Fern seems to have cracked the eating less, moving more equation and looks amazing on it. She’s still got meat on her bones, but you can see her shape better now.

Her belly’s gone, her cheekbones are back, she’s in leggings and knee-high boots for god’s sake!

I thought she looked great before her Lance Armstrong moment, mind you – like Alison on BB3, she just seemed to look happy in her skin and there’s nothing more attractive I don’t think.

Fat, thin, face like a 10lb trout, beauty queen or like someone set it on fire and knocked it out with a cricket bat, feeling like you’ve got it going on means that you HAVE got it going on.

Confidence is infectious – as are meal deals in Pizza Hut. And that’s where I’m hitting the concrete wall that bounces me back into the realms of a yo-yo dieter.

As for me, I’m considering taking up cycling – but I don’t want to run the risk of blocking out the sun every time I bend over to change gears.

I started building up to the New Year ...

... for a while before the event, doing that kind of mental check-listing that I’m such a dab hand at.

For the three weeks before, I made charts, drew graphs, used different coloured pens to do exercise lists – blue for bike (sedentary... yeah, in more ways than one), red for gym (there’s still loads of ink in it), green for walking (I like green. As a pretend redhead, I think I should wear more... the only real conclusion I could draw under this column) – and got out all my blubber books to read up on what I should be doing in 2008.

I pawed through the Fat Girl Slim cookery book again, but seeing as I can’t boil an egg effectively (but somehow manage to do a fried one to perfection), I decided to give it a miss.

I leafed through that most famous of fat bird’s favourite flesh eating tomes, but realised I’d been there, done that, and still wasn’t wearing the appropriate T-shirt.

Oprah may not still be cooking In The Kitchen With Rosie or getting “with the programme” a la Bob Greene, and it seems that neither am I.

I revisited the low fat options – I’ve got all Rosemary Conley’s idealistic reads – and looked again at Atkins, For Life, For Maintenance, For Naughty Bread Lovers Everywhere.

The GI complexities, Diet Doctors Inside and Out, low carb for veggies, low carb forever, books that tell you how to have Big, Big Love when you’re a big, big lass (pillows have a million different uses and apparently double as a hoist).

Then there was self-hypnosis, Paul McKenna’s CD which made him sound like a man possessed but didn’t make me infused with the spirit to Just Say No. Not forgetting six books on how to kick-start my metabolism (but not one on how to stop chewing when full).

I stumbled upon Michael Winner’s Fat Pig Diet, but I can’t stand to look at his face, Nerys and India’s Idiot-Proof Diet, but I don’t do smug rich girls, The Karl Lagerfeld Diet, but who wants to look that rough in skinny jeans and fingerless leather gloves?

So there I was, charts and books at my feet, when I realised that all the reading and advice in the world won’t make 2008 a better year, body-wise.

Short of a gastric bypass and sudden love of hospital food, I came to the Technicolored conclusion that maybe, just maybe, I don’t need to make grand gestures with this dieting lark.

To borrow a line from Robbie Williams and other AAers, I just need to live one day at a time.

I do, however, have difficulties accepting the things I cannot change, and I’ve spent a lifetime not being able to spot the different between these and the things I can.

My slim boyfriend, who’s fast gaining a belly due to a mixture of Hiya Love’s homemade everything and general contentment, last night put all this into context for me.

While I was pawing through my Fat Club book, grieving over the fact I was 2lb short of losing two stone six months ago but am now 2lb heavier than I was when I first went for the weigh-in (keeping up?), he took it upon himself to dish up some tough love.

No, it didn’t consist of taking the tin of Quality Street off the table – worse, prising my jaws open and picking the round toffee out of my teeth – but reminding me that I can no longer spend my life just talking about my inability to diet effectively.

“Either put up or shut up,” he told me. “And I don’t want to hear that nonsense about you not having enough interest in yourself to do it.

“You know what you’ve got to do – stop eating for six, and move more.

“Or, and here’s a thing, stop putting yourself through this and accept yourself for who and what you are. You’re lovely. You just don’t see it, as you define yourself by your waist size.

“You need to open your eyes and see what’s in front of you.”

Before I could say “a big belly, spaniels ears for boobs, more chins than a Chinese telephone directory, fat, fat, FAT”, he reminded me that it was my future.

Another F word.

So my New Year’s resolution is my Monday to Sunday resolution on a normal week, and that’s to eat less and move more.

It’s written down in black and white – and red and green and blue.

It’s my future. (But I had a bloody good blowout on chicken pie and steamed chocolate pudding as I attempted – again – to say goodbye to my lardy-arsed past.)