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.