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.)