It takes a big personality ...

... in more ways than one – to celebrate your lumps, bumps and belly. It takes even more unravelling to like yourself just the way you are, especially if you’re the opposite of what society deems acceptable and attractive.

But some have managed it, a few beautiful, brilliant and, yes, big souls for whom “chubby” is no barrier to success or self-confidence. They’ve managed to force their considerable talents and bountiful bits through the cracks that largely forbid obese people from getting through by the force of their will, talents and iron-willed mantra which should be doled out at school at the earliest opportunity along with the pop and crisps.

And that is: “I’m not better than you, but, even looking and feeling like I do, I’m definitely as good as.” It’s taken years for people of a different shape – and trust me, round is a shape – to break into the mainstream of pop culture, those like comic Johnny Vegas, singer Beth Ditto and Gavin and Stacey stars James Corden and Ruth Jones.

But instead of just celebrating the fact they’re amazing role models, now they’re being blamed for our obesity epidemic.

Not only have they to contend with chaffing legs, researchers are sticking two stick thin fingers up to them by saying their success causes the public to accept being overweight as normal and ignore the dangers of carrying too many pounds. The survey of over 2,000 adults was carried out for charity Nuffield Health, which offers weight loss surgery in its hospitals.

Hello, can anyone spot a clue there? They don’t get Twiggies through their door, do they!

Anyway, Professor Michael McMahon, Nuffield’s consultant said: “The increasing profile of larger celebrities such as James Corden, Ruth Jones, Eamonn Holmes and Beth Ditto means that being overweight is now perceived as being normal in the eyes of the public.

“The danger of celebrities who flaunt their weight is that viewers admire them and do not take their own weight as seriously as they should.”

Doctor, let me tell you something for nothing – I don’t know one single overweight person who hasn’t, at some time in their lives, struggled with their sense of self.

They’ve probably spent years following the dietary Holy Trinity of calorie counting, Atkins and abject misery until they said enough’s enough. I know that I have.

Speaking as someone who’s a size 24, I have spent a lifetime wishing that I didn’t have a weight “problem” or – and here’s a thing – simply had the necessary tools at my disposal to accept myself the way I am.

In May, I made a BBC documentary about this very subject called Fix My Fat Head.

It was my attempt to find out why I do what I do – and that is sometimes, not all the time, overeat for comfort and pleasure or to swallow down dissatisfaction.

I also wanted to see if I could employ different tactics to get to actually like myself as a fat person, or “person of size” as the Americans like to delicately put it. As part of that show I tried out an overeaters’ support group, an extreme dieting class, and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy sessions.

While having a go on the chair with a hypnotist to the stars, I was asked if I’d ever been called Dumbo. And she wasn’t asking about my intelligence levels there.

I’m sure well-meaning folk confuse having thick ankles with being thick-skinned. But do you know what I should have done instead?

I should have had dinner with James, Beth, Johnny and Ruth.

I should have spent time in their company, listening to them talk about their complex relationships with food, and possibly themselves. I should have taken measure of people for whom size is a state of mind, and not the measure of them as individuals.

I should have gone round to their houses, had a poke through their kitchen cupboards, and just had a bloody good laugh about this fat infused predicament of ours. At least they wouldn’t be watching how much you ate.

Tell someone they’re not quite up to the mark often enough, that they would be “better” slimmer, and only an idiot wouldn’t believe the tripe.

I’ve spent years wondering if I’d ever get to grips with myself, that authentic (thank you, Oprah) part of me that wakes up every morning and screams: “You’re great just the way you are, no matter what people say to you!”

Yet I seem to have spent my entire life on countless diets and feeling that I don’t quite measure up, especially in the boobs, waist and thighs ratio. Fat is a word that strikes fear into the heart of anyone who doesn’t know the meaning of different.

It’s the antithesis of accepted beauty, a big huge flabby blight on the landscape of normality, something which lots of us over a size 18 can’t quite get to grips with.

And that’s because we’re still largely on the cusp of acceptance. We can’t shop like the rest of you, assumptions are made about our lifestyle choices, if we go to the doctor with an eye infection it’s flippantly blamed on some form of obese germ running through every pour.

Wipe the tears of disbelief and frustration away and you spend your life over compensating for not being able to control this one anomaly by constantly trying to out-do, out-smart and out-funny the rest of the normal sized world. What we don’t need is yet another doctor denying us the bounty of brilliant, beautiful and happy role models who just happen to be a bit overweight. There are worse things to be than fat and absolutely fabulous you know.

CORNWALL ...

... two nights in St Ives for rest, relaxation, pasties and ice-cream.

What I didn’t expect was to feel exhausted and gargantuan within half hour of arriving.

First of all, the hotel was up a cliff. Well, I say cliff whereas my Significant (thin) Other called it a gentle incline. Whatever, it was enough to kill me and make me wish I’d packed lighter when all I had in my case was two pairs of knickers, a mobile phone and a KitKat, just in case there was a proliferation of fish.

Anyway, I quickly forgot about the impromptu workout once we were settled in the hotel, a Cornish paradise which didn’t give you a map and details of what time breakfast was the next morning, but a complimentary cream tea on arrival. A cream tea! For free! Blimey.

I almost forgot our bedroom was on the fourth floor while chewing, but reality soon bit me and my failing legs as we trudged slowly upstairs, with me pretending to appreciate the views at every turn in order to catch my breath.

Our room was nice, topped off with an exceptional sea view. But I guess when you’re paying £160 a night, and you’re on the fourth floor, that isn’t too much to ask.

The shower wasn’t made for big birds though, and if I’d dropped the soap it’s safe to say my bottom would have gone through the glass and possibly into Devon. I started to have a more extreme type of sweats thereafter, the kind which aren’t caused by exercise but self-induced neuroses where you think the world is conspiring against you and your bulk.

First there was the hotel’s location, then came the fourth floor room. The shower size left a lot to be desired, and the table and chairs in our swanky suite were made of trendy Italian Perspex.

As in flimsy. As in creak, creak, snap, snap potential. So I avoided them like the plague, the memory of crashing to the ground on a knackered plastic garden chair, bruising my ample pride and my enormous you know what, flashing before me.

So I went for the safe option, and I sat on the bed. What could go wrong, right? You know that creak, creak, snap, snap I mentioned earlier? Amplify that by 50. Children stopped playing. Traffic ground to a halt. Pasty fillers put down their potatoes and cheese.

For one brief moment on this glorious day, the population of St Ives looked towards the far horizon wondering where the storm was coming from.

I had broken the bed.

Imagine telling the hotel owner what had happened had I been a lithe lightweight. I’m sure, for the money we were paying, they would have been deeply apologetic. Of course, the bed then would have been at fault.

However, the conversation I had with myself as I tried to get up and see the damage was less forgiving. S(t)O got down on his knees to check under it for damage while I stood inconsolable in the corner, feeling like a fat unpopular kid in school who broke the pummel horse on the first
jump over.

He told me, in the assuaging and fat free language of love, there was a slat missing and – get this – it could have happened to anyone.

Trouble was, it happened to me. Big fat me. And nothing he could say lessened my embarrassment, especially because it happened again moments later. Yes, seriously.

The bed, he said, wasn’t put together right and didn’t have a middle support. That knowledge was of no compensation to me though, and for the rest of our break I slept uneasily on the side reinforced with our suitcases, debating if I should complain about the wonky frame and ask for a refund or at least a new room.

Next time we go away, I’ll be certain to ask if the hotel’s on the flat, if there’s a lift to all floors, if the shower is big enough to turn around in and the bed is a divan.

Of course I didn’t mention our fragile sleeping arrangements, and when it came to signing out I said we’d had a lovely time, a short break – in more ways than one – I’d remember for a long time to come.

I AM trying to convince myself ...

... that I have a bad back. More than that, pains down the left side of my leg too. Just for added conviction, you understand. Or is that self delusion? Delete as necessary.

I think I do really have twinges and I am feeling a bit stiff. But, let’s be honest here, there’s nothing much wrong with me, save a bad case of ennui.

I am in what’s commonly known to failed dieters everywhere as The Slump.

This is that awful, dark hole you find yourself trying to crawl out of when things aren’t moving fast enough for you.
It’s a basic lack of interest in yourself and the task at hand – in this case, working towards feeling better and getting fitter.

For the past few months I’ve been exercising and trying to cut down my portion sizes. Things have been going brilliantly well with my personal trainer and there aren’t words beautiful, glorious and diamond-encrusted enough to explain how magical I feel after a session with my power dresser.

We stretch, we chat, we bend, we move, we both stand in amazement and whoop a bit after I run. Yes, seriously, I run. Not outdoors, as that simply wouldn’t do, but on the dreadmill (sic).

I’m now up to 12 minute miles and can run for precisely 12 minutes 27 seconds at a time without stopping for a KitKat (anyone who’s fat and taken up exercise will tell you that every second counts when you’re measuring success).
I love the sense of achievement it has brought me, and nothing equals it – not the book deal, the TV documentary, having the best haircut going. Nothing.

And that’s because it’s way out of my comfort zone, a place where lesser mortals fear to tread.

But me being me, I can only pick holes in it. I fail to celebrate what IS and start to berate myself about what should be. It’s the cerebral fat running through the middle of me.

And so the psycho babble begins. I tell myself that two hours a week with the trainer isn’t enough. Then I move on to my eating habits, my lack of appropriate workout gear, how I should be running 13 minutes by now. I pick myself apart because I feel I don’t quite measure up.

Now don’t get me wrong – I don’t do this all the time. For the past few months I’ve coasted along nicely, buoyed with a nice sideline in healthy perspective (and seeing a bit of weight falling off my face).

But when that veneer starts to slip (read: when my trousers fail to feel slacker and I assuage the disappointment with industrial sized ham rolls), I lose sight of the big picture and all I can concentrate on is the word BIG.

So here I am, bang in the middle of The Slump. A crazy, odd place which renders me disinterested. From there rises the beast of burden that is disappointment and instead of working it out in a ball of sweat and simply feeling better about everything afterwards, I’m going to go home and do what I shouldn’t do – process it all with a processed meal.

I’ll go home and literally stare at the wall on Facebook and imagine my back’s really hurting and those pains down my leg are getting a bit more pronounced.

And I’ll pick myself up eventually and will be back on track by next Monday, hoping to start running to stop myself standing still yet again.