Hannah Jones' Diary of a Diet

I have not so much fallen off the wagon ...

noreply@blogger.com (Hannah Jones) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 03:55:00 +0000

... as broken the floor on the way down and cracked a few ribs.

Metaphorically speaking of course.

Like every other diet I’ve been on, I was doing so damn well before I forgot to be good when the stresses and strains of life got in the way.

And now I can’t see the way back to the path of fat-free self-righteousness.

It’s such hard work, isn’t it? Watching what you eat and therefore think all the time. And I’ve had a belly full.

What happens then is that I start to eat ice-cream with such a ferocity I can’t help but think I’m being liberated and resigned and tough and grown-up about beating myself up in this way.

I’ll go through maybe a week of thinking I’ve finally emancipated myself until I see someone who looks happy in their skin and I start comparing myself with them. I always lose that battle.

The other day, while being unwittingly caught up in a fancy wedding in Llandeilo, I got so depressed by the sheer slim-line beauty and happiness of it all that I told my ever-suffering fiancee that I wasn’t going to get married.

It was pointless, I reasoned, because I’d never look as nice as a “normal” bride.

At that moment I had visions of me looking like a dumpling in a hanky.

We’ll have to cancel it, I moaned, as I can’t wear high heels for two minutes let alone all day. Phone the caterer, I demanded, and tell them we don’t want pasties and pies and big rolls with bits in because that’s what a FAT BRIDE would want.

Just take the ring back, I cried, because it’s lost on my eclair like, pudgy finger anyway.

I was in a right state, I can tell you – and the fact I was having an emotional meltdown while stuffing a two scoop ice-cream cone from the choc/cake shop Heavenly (perfect name, that) wasn’t lost on me either.

If anything, it made me loathe my shape even more.

I wish, wish, wish I was someone who didn’t compare myself to other women.

It’s an occupational hazard, and one that’s compounded by the fact that I really go to town on my perceived short-comings when diets fail. It’s 10 times worse then, a troublesomeness which eats at me.

I have to wonder, though, if my psychological makeup would still be prone to such weighty musings, even if I was a “normal” size.

Honestly, I think I’d be exactly the same. Me being me I’m bound to find something to pick up, some fantasy itch to scratch.

The irony, of course, is that I’m largely a contented soul, but one who is plagued with insecurities about how I look and how I should feel.

And I’m not the only one.

How food shapes and affects our lives, and how what we eat affects our sense of identity, our self-image and feelings about ourselves, is investigated in a new Radio Four show called Food For
Thought fronted by journalist Nina Myskow.

Over tea and chocolate tart in a suite at the Ritz, comedian Joan Rivers last weekend recounted a lifetime of self-loathing and fear of being fat.

She talked about the shock of discovering she wasn’t beautiful, her mother’s advice on dinner parties and an extraordinary daily diet of vitamin pills, low-calorie ice cream sandwiches and cereal with whipped cream. It was in turns hilarious, sad and insightful.

The next one is on at 2.45pm on Sunday. Food for thought at dinner time indeed.

AM I ever going to reach ..

noreply@blogger.com (Hannah Jones) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:04:00 +0000

... that properly grown-up idea of thinking life is too short to worry about my weight?

When I’m stressed out, it’s all I seem to think about and that’s because, in this one area of my life, I can’t multi-task.

I mean that I can’t deal with my stress and watch my weight/be good because I’m too busy trying to swallow down worry. While I’m doing that, I can’t concentrate on calorie counting and exercising or whatever else I need to do to keep losing weight. Following?

When things are more in balance, it’s loads easier. Well, when I say loads I actually mean slightly, as in a little bit – totally opposite to the size of my portions during sour times.

I anticipate being stressed for four more weeks, because that’s how long I’ve got left recording a radio show for BBC Wales called What’s The Story?

I love doing it; I appreciate the opportunity, the team members are delightful company and I still can’t quite believe that me, little old me from the Rassau with a cupboard full of insecurities and dropped aitches when I speak, was asked in the first place.

But it doesn’t come without a significant level of panic because it’s recorded in front of a live audience (as opposed to a dead one I guess), it’s a fast turnaround, I’m doing it while hammers continue to pound out each of the 10 long hours of my day job, and I’m attempting to drop 76 dress sizes before my wedding next year.

So what gives? As ever, food and exercise.

Doing the show is fraught, fabulous and frantic fun and, increased stress levels excepted, one of the reasons I signed on in the first place was that it was a chance to do something which has nothing at all to do with how I look.

You don’t have to do your hair for radio, in case you hadn’t noticed, or wear a girdle. Hey, take your bra off in the studio if you want – it’s that much of a marvellously freeing medium.

Up until now, most of the non-newspaper stuff I’ve been doing has involved me talking about being fat, my struggles with weight and self-acceptance, chatting about the diets I’ve loved to hate and not lost anything on.

I have a considered and sometimes quirky view on it, and I’m often asked to share my thoughts on the obesity debate which I’m happy to do – spreading the fat as liberally as I do butter when I’m too busy to think about what I’m actually doing and take decisive action to the contrary.

So although I’m eating more because I’m frantic, I’m happier in my unease because I’m doing a project which isn’t fat related. So I’m equally cursed and blessed, an irony not lost on me or my belly.

Maybe a better woman would be able to do it all – work, successfully diet and try to be funny for the nation.

Well, two out of three ain’t bad for me. For now…

What’s The Story? is on BBC Radio Wales every Saturday at 1pm. It is recorded at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff each Thursday night prior to broadcast. Tickets are free and to be part of the audience call the box office on 029 2039 1391

It takes a big personality ...

noreply@blogger.com (Hannah Jones) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:13:00 +0000

... 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 ...

noreply@blogger.com (Hannah Jones) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:42:00 +0000

... 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 ...

noreply@blogger.com (Hannah Jones) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:19:00 +0000

... 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.

There is nothing “gentle” ...

noreply@blogger.com (Hannah Jones) — Tue, 26 May 2009 08:08:00 +0000

... about telling someone that they need to lose weight. Put the goodie two shoes medical stuff aside for a minute, please, and hearing the words “slim down or ship out” has got to hurt. And that doesn’t matter who you are in life’s colourful tapestry. Nobody should confuse having thick ankles with being thick skinned.

We appear to be living in a society where the worst five words in the world seem to be “S***, you’ve put on weight”, where everyone actually dreams of hearing “Wow…. What diet are YOU on“ or “You look so fabulous, you really MUST give me the name of your bariatric surgeon”.

What you don’t expect is someone like Oprah Winfrey who, unlike Fern Briton, has showed the world every single one of her emotional and physical stretchmarks, to kowtow to those who think they know better.

But that, apparently, is exactly what the queen of unconventional did when US Vogue editor Anna Wintour told the talk show host to drop 20 pounds to be on the cover of the fashion magazine back in 1998.

The severly fringed and obviously viper tongued one revealed that is what she said during an unaired segment from her 60 Minutes interview recently shown in the States.

"It was a very gentle suggestion," she said, laughing (the cheek!). "I went to Chicago to visit Oprah, and I suggested that it might be an idea that she lose a little bit of weight."

Oh, an IDEA. Right…. as if one on this every subject hadn’t popped into Oprah’s mind before!

She added: "I said simply that you might feel more comfortable. She was a trooper!"

Oprah, 55, must have listened to the fashion legend, who deals with style and trades on women’s insecurities by offering up images of dreams we can’t even aspire to let alone achieve. Perfection costs, and you can’t pay for it in the currency of carbs sadly.

Anyway, Oprah was featured on the cover from more than 10 years ago with the tagline: "Oprah! A Major Movie, An Amazing Makeover” in order to sell her film, Beloved.

“She totally welcomed the idea, and she went on a very stringent diet," Wintour said. "And it was one of our most successful covers ever."

It’s amazing to me that Winfrey has pockets so deep could purchase Vogue if she wanted to, yet to get on the cover, she had to make a deal with the devil, even if she was wearing Prada and offering to dress you in designer gear from head to toe.

I’m not sure what is more surprising here, Oprah losing the weight for Wintour or Wintour suggesting to someone of her stature that she didn’t quite measure up in the beauty stakes, which in effect precluded her from beatific greatness as defined by her.

Note I didn’t say smart enough, famous enough, rich enough. She simply was too big.

A decade on, and I’d like to think that Oprah has learned her lesson and wouldn’t slim for anyone, but herself. And she’d tell Wintour to rearrange the words “stick”, “skinny“ “Vogue”. “a***” and advise her to make sure she makes a meal out of the asterisks.

I love Sophie Dahl.

noreply@blogger.com (Hannah Jones) — Tue, 19 May 2009 07:32:00 +0000

Maybe it’s because she shares a first name with my mother, or something to do with the fact her cheeks look like two apples. Then again, I’m also partial to lentils in a curry.

She was also fat and famed for her “curves”, so you’ve got to applaud her for that I guess.

I think you forget that she wasn’t massive though, a real, proper fat girl. The way the Press banged on about her, as being a plus size model, a cheerleader for the Rubens-esque among us, you’d think she was a right lumper.

She was, in fact, about a size 16 at her biggest, but it’s more likely she was a 14. Standing at an enviable 5ft 10in and with boobs up to her Granny Smiths, she was certainly formidable, someone who looked like she happily indulged in whatever she wanted.

Then she got thin. Thin as in curveless, ramrod, lanky, bloody lucky. And the world seemed to turn on her wondering where it all went wrong, or at least where her belly went.

On the one side you had the pear-shaped gals wondering why our queen stopped celebrating her ample backside, all of us biting down on our disappointment that one of the sisterhood had gone over to the light side; then there were those who just wanted to know what was in the Dahl Diet so they could follow it to the letter and be just like Soph.

So how then did she do it? And why?

It turns out, our girl has always had a complicated relationship with food. But unlike the mere mortals among us who don’t quite work out the kinks by cutting out the carbohydrates, she managed to figure it all out for herself.

And, just like magic, or like the time she went away and stuffed herself stupid only to find that her jeans were looser, her stomach flatter and half her bottom was still languishing at a five star retreat in Mexico, she became “normal”. No longer did she need to crack jokes about declaring her arse as excess baggage.

In her new cookery book, which is also part slimming confessional, she puts it like this: “I have always had a passionate relationship with food: passionate in that I loved it blindly or saw it as its own entity, rife with problems. Back in the old days food was either a faithful friend or a sin, rarely anything in between... I was the big model. I was meant to eat, a lot. It gave other people hope and cheered them as they enjoyed their chocolate. It was a clumsy way of thinking.”

To cut a long story short, in Miss Dahl’s Voluptuous Delights, there’s no big reveal about how she lost weight but a series of what she calls “mini epiphanies”: love splits, moving house, losing work, finding work, loss, illness and the general mash-up of living.

Dahl writes: “To everything there is a season; from 17 to 21 mine was the season of chocolate cake. I didn’t know how to eat within the boundaries of reason; instead I learned loudly through trial and error. My unsure baby fat, for that’s what it was really, slunk slowly away one year. Its departure

left me to my adult self and the slow joy I get from food and cooking is something I cannot imagine being without.”

Hers is a lovely book, due in no small part to the way she weaves her thoughts about herself and her charmed life into a sticky, beautiful jumble that’s straight out of the Malory Towers of her mind.

Yet for all her humanity about eating well, body image and the delight she takes in feeding her friends, Sophie’s world reads like an unfamiliar glossy smorgasbord of things whole and hearty, sweet and dainty.

Her BFG namesake ate snozzcumber, but Soph has a more refined palate.

Her childhood wasn’t filled with tomato sauce sandwiches and frozen Arctic Roll, or chicken and chips in a basket like mine. You’d expect nothing less than one where every one of her relatives was born knowing how to make Victoria sponge and vanilla custard; her adult culinary life is more about throwing together scrumpdiddleumptious chargrilled scallops on pea puree or chicken and fennel au gratin than only having the energy to warm up a couple of cheese and onion pasties after work and then hate yourself for it. If Ms Dahl was writing this, I’m sure she would sum up her ethos by reminding us of her book’s subtle: The Art Of Eating A Little Of What You Fancy (HarperCollins, £18.99).

So does she have a weakness that brings her down from her posh perch and back into the land of the indigent indulgent?

White bread slathered with butter and Marmite, followed by salt and vinegar crisps.

Nice to see Dahlicious is human after all.

"I just wanted to tell you that I’ve lost 10 stone ...”

noreply@blogger.com (Hannah Jones) — Wed, 13 May 2009 07:37:00 +0000

... said the woman on the train last Wednesday morning.

“It’s taken me three years mind you and I’ve still got three stone to go. If I can do it, you can do it too. By the way, nice documentary. I laughed all the way through it, and cried a bit. Is your mother taking orders for her Sunday dinners of meat and 17 veg?”

I had to stop myself from asking if I could lick her, just so I could taste what dietary success tastes like. Instead I just smiled, extended my sincere congratulations – mixed with a genuine side of awe – and felt humbled that someone – anyone – had tuned in to watch me cry, sigh and giggle lots over my inability to say no to dips on the graveyard slot.

Later I found out that almost two million actually watched me without make-up on, getting sad and mad in equal measures on BBC One last Tuesday night. Can you imagine what that feels like?

Here are some words which may do the enormity of such madness justice – Mad. Odd. Weird. Wonderful. Insane. Anti-climactic.

Since the documentary Fix My Fat Head aired, hundreds of people have written to me to share their opinions on their lives in the fat lane, thoughts on yours truly or to offer me free “treatment” in something or other.

And when I say hundreds, last time I filed them all together to at least start to thank people for their kindness, even if they were kicking me in the teeth, it totalled 765. That’s 765. And again, 765!

The responses have thrilled me, tickled me, and some brought tears to my eyes; others were annoying, way too personal, rude and left me wondering if I’d actually been fronting a Panorama special on paranoia instead of a light-hearted film on what it’s like to feel judged by your size and not any other aspect of your self (sic).

I’ve had comments about my “fabulous/rubbish” boobs, my “great/80s” big hair, how I look “awful” without make-up on but “don’t worry, everyone does… thanks for showing it like it is, Han”, to how “gorgeous” I am but “how much more attractive” I could become if I cut out salt (eh?!).

Some have offered to help me find God and then She, doubtless a 25st power walker from Abertillery, would in turn help me relearn the rules of the Atkins diet. I’ve had hypnotherapists wanting me to give it another shot with them, a LighterLife magazine through the door, flowers delivered (but no Greggs cheese and onion pasties, funnily enough), cards posted, an offer to have my portrait painted, and reviews written in the Press by people who’ve, by and large, been kind, gracious and totally “got” what I was doing.

I’ve even been on the radio, in the papers, done photoshoots, and people are actually taking bets on me getting Fern Briton’s job on This Morning. I gave a quote about it saying something flippant like “Go on the sofa with Phil? Well, sitting down is my favourite pastime... sure, why the hell not” with my tongue firmly in my cheek.

While all this has been going on, life has happened. Know what I mean?

And the battle between choosing fruit over a muffin for breakfast is still every bit as real... only people in Marksies are watching.

To misquote Heidi Klum on Project Catwalk, one minute you’re in, the next you’re back to being a blot on the landscape of your own life.

One day you’re on telly, the next you’re back in the day job answering the phone, deleting spam email, wondering where the next compliment or snide aside will come from.

The good stuff feels like it’s all happening to my slimmer, wittier, prettier, more showbiz twin sister… rather than to ME, the REAL Han, who lives in the land of the living and the bill paying and the train catching and the deadline meeting and the navel gazing and the calorie counting.

But it’s liberating to know I can now bump into anyone I was in school with and don’t have to pretend they’re not going to bang on about how fat I’ve become behind my back. At least now I can walk with my low-lying belly held high.

FAT. Now there's a word ...

noreply@blogger.com (Hannah Jones) — Tue, 05 May 2009 12:49:00 +0000

... that strikes fear into anyone who doesn't know the meaning of chaffing.

Speaking as someone who hasn't seen their feet since 1971, and who judges herself by her waist size, not the glory of her IQ or how obviously utterly fabulous she is, I looked upon making TV documentary Fix My Fat Head as my chance to sort out, once and for all, why I do what I do.

And that, simply put, is sometimes overeat for comfort and pleasure – though not all the time, so let's be clear about that from the start. Don't for a minute think that, as a big bird, I sit in the house stuffing chocolate, fried bread and beef burgers for breakfast. I don't. But I know, deep down, I have the capacity for turning my brand of indulgence up a notch.

I also have a wonky view of myself, my allure, my attractiveness and self worth. And I think that's all to do with the fact that I seem to have spent my life on countless diets, regardless of my personal achievements – and let's not forget that I'm a journalist, newspaper columnist, a published author, and all round (sic) nice guy. I self-medicate with Fruit 'n' Nut, and 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 not just 1 in 77 – and screams, bugger it, you're great just the way you are. And that doesn't matter if you're a size eight or a 28.

Like every other woman I know, I've followed the dietary Holy Trinity in a bid to lose weight – calorie counting, Atkins and abject misery – but nothing has ever worked long term for me.

"Eat less, move more" is society's helpful mantra. But why can't people like me do it? As we all know, advice isn't like T-shirts – one size certainly doesn't fit all. So I came to the conclusion that the problem was surely all in my head. The bigger question, of course, was would I find something during filming which would help me move on and out of my big fat way?

The journey was certainly an interesting one, as I tried out an overeaters' support group, an extreme dieting class, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy sessions and a few goes on the chair with a hypnotist to the stars.

The latter was perhaps the most telling as she asked me if I'd ever been called Dumbo growing up. Dumbo! At first I thought she was referring to someone calling me "thick"; when the penny finally dropped on camera, I hope the disappointment on my face says it all. For the record, the film wasn't made by someone who needed to drop ONE dress size or tone up A BIT. When I started filming I was at least seven stones overweight and a size 24.

The difference between me and most women, though, is that I have never harboured ambitions to be a size 12.

I'm just a normal someone who'd like to fit into a size 18-20 dress and think, finally, that what I feel on the outside is doing what I'm capable of on the inside justice.

I was just fed up of feeling fat, of, in internet terms at least, being more niche market than marketable as a sexy, sassy, sorted, strong woman, of pretending to do up the laces on my zip-up shoes after a single flight of stairs.

My relationship with food and myself has always been complex, like the best kind of carbs. So this film was a chance to look at why that is, why I'm such a harsh critic, and why I reach for crusty bread and strawberry jam sandwiches at times of difficulty and joy.

I also wanted it to be funny and light-hearted, because that's how I am. At the same time, it needed to reflect my confusion, disappointment and sadness about this one area of my life that I can't seem to get a handle on. Sure I laugh during it… but my "issues" also bring me crashing to my knees.

So here I am then, literally waiting for a film of my life to start, and some very meaty questions still remain: Have I lost weight? Do I look in the mirror and feel satisfied? Did I learn enough to move on with a more healthy and balanced view of myself?

I'll leave you to be the judge of that tonight. (I'm far too busy thinking about what I’m going to have for dinner to possibly comment.)

There's not much I can do ...

noreply@blogger.com (Hannah Jones) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:29:00 +0000

... about my wedding next year apart from pick out bunting.

I’ve seen some with cupcakes on which I think will fit into the general theme of cake and more cake and maybe some pizza slices and fruit on skewers, something which my mother thinks will appease my “posh friends from London”.

I think free drink would do it, but you can’t argue with a woman who’s already bought two marquees and two canteens of cutlery ready for the second half of my nuptials.

I’m getting married next May, as in May 2010, not next month.

There’s lots to do in the run up, like make the invites, choose the songs, pick the venue and win the argument about the male guests not wearing suits and ties and buttonholes.

But all this pales into insignificance when you have to consider The Dress.

Anyway, before we go there, let’s put the whole thing into some kind of perspective first.

It is going to be a quietly unconventional wedding, split over two days.

My Significant (thin) Other has walked down the aisle more times than Joan Collins; both either have a wedding cake fetish or are in cahoots to disprove the theory that diamonds are forever.

And me being me, I’m as fussed on traditional as I am on counting calories. So between us, we’ve come up with a plan which will hopefully please us and appease my family.

To that end, we’re having a small “do” on the one day, a late register office wedding where all the guests – including me, freeing both me and my shy father from doing the grand entrance thing – will pile onto a 1940s bus and be transported from Ebbw Vale to Abergavenny for the I dos.

Then about 20 of us will have a pub meal, where I can have lasagne if I want, my father gammon and fried egg and the fruit on skewers lot duck or goose or goujons of whatever.

By my reckoning I’ll be back in the house by 7pm, as I’m sure to have had enough by then.

The next afternoon, it’s marquees en masse at my mother’s.

It’s my favourite place, where I feel most comfortable, and on my wedding day(s) that’s exactly how I want to be.

I’d rather be there than in a posh hotel eating canapes where I have to pick out some of the filling any day of the week – and pay over the odds for pop and orange.

Sorting all this out feels like a leisurely walk in the park compared to the hell I’m having thinking about The Dress.

Type “plus size bride” or variations thereof into Google and you enter a minefield of internet sites promising “curvy” ladies the meringue of their dreams, usually called Venus or Desire or Darleen.

“Hey, if size 8s can wear it, you can too!” they proclaim next to pictures of big girls in dresses which would look ridiculous on anyone over a size 12.

I call this the Me Too syndrome, where women shaped like me want exactly what women not shaped like me can get away with. Big bustle on the back? No problem! Full-on fairy princess skirt? Order now!

Strapless/backless/senseless silk affair? Click away!

Red pre-Raphelite party frock complete with veil and matching sporran for the man of your dreams?

It can be with you, made to measure from China, within two weeks.

Simple cream tunic with big pompom roses on the hem and matching wide legged trousers? You’re having a laugh.

Or floor length velvet evening coat and A-line silk dress? Dream on.

Frustrating is not the word.

So in order to look a semblance of fabulous on my wedding day(s) and to avoid chaffing on the vintage bus, a friend is going to make me something.

And there won’t be a bustle, pleat, crystal bodice or detachable cap sleeve in sight.

There will, however, be an elasticated waist – well, you’ve got to make sure there’s enough room for all those fruits on skewers...

I live my life by two basic rules ...

noreply@blogger.com (Hannah Jones) — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:14:00 +0000

... always wear deodorant and never run for anything.

The fact that I’d forgotten to do the former should have put me off doing the latter the other day. That, and a general dislike of fitness and desire to get anywhere quickly. Seriously, I should know better at my age.

I generally take life at a more leisurely pace.

Namely, I only turn over on soft furnishings to avoid bedsores and try out different cushions.

I don’t live my life in the fast lane, which maybe is one of the reasons I’m built like an elephant and not a gazelle.

Anyway, I broke the habit of a lifetime the other morning and I’ve been upset about it ever since. And that’s because as soon as I broke into a sprint – well, I say sprint, but it was more like comedy fast walking with the (very) odd hop, skip and a jump thrown in to catch the train which had just pulled in – a kid started singing to me.

Now before you imagine some angelic Faryl Smith-type sound, wafting around me in an ethereal melodic dance, let me tell you that what I heard was enough to unsettle me. Big style.

So picture the scene: I’m running – reluctantly – my boobs appear to have doubled in size and are crying out to break free. I’m sweating. Heavily.

I’m thinking, you stupid cow. Then congratulating myself for the impromptu exercise session.

I’m imagining I look like Bo Derek on her way to meet Arthur for a nanosecond. I laugh inwardly as I know it’s nonsense (I mean, I wouldn’t be caught dead with cornrows)

And then it happens. The Kid and The Song.

Mid boing comes the strain of – wait for it – Hey Fatty Boom Boom. He repeats it over and over and over again, but without the pay off line about me being anything like a sugar angel dumpling.
I managed to multi-task during the song by keeping up my trot, getting on the train and not changing my route to run over and punch someone. Or cry.

But, bloody hell, it upset me at the time. Speaking as someone who’s never really suffered at the hands of bullies, it simply floored me. And that’s because, me being me, I failed to process it as just kids being kids.

All I heard was honesty in booming crotchets and quavers and giggles en masse as the ground quivered under my concrete feet.

The chorus and second test of the elasticity of my skin came when I got to work and opened up my email account.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” one started, “but could this be one for you?” It came from someone who thought I could be a case study for a magazine. Want to read the brief which she thought I fulfilled? Here goes.

“This month we’re writing about fattism in the workplace. We wanted to know why so many smart, plus-sized women are unfairly missing out on jobs and being paid less than their slimmer colleagues.”

I nearly choked. I didn’t get any further than this at first as I couldn’t get past the fact that I was sent it in the first place.

Secondly, what the hell is fattism in the workplace?

I don’t know of any plus-sized women who don’t get top jobs because they’re, well, plus sized.

They get them because they’re good, or they don’t because they’re rubbish. Not because they’re stuffing their faces with Peters Pies during the interview.

Anyway, there’s more.

This fancy, London-based and fashion forward magazine was apparently looking for women who are, for want of a better term, successfully fat.

Like Dawn French with a briefcase, I imagine.

The email went on: “We’ve found evidence to support this fact but we now want to see if there are any women out there who break this stereotype.

“Are you or any of your female colleagues in your 20s or early 30s and at the top of your career tree, in a managerial role, or running your own successful business despite being size 20 or over?

“If you or anyone you know has always refused to let your size hold you back and you’re now enjoying career success, we want to hear your inspirational story.”

Did you see that word creep in there? It’s that pesky little blighter “despite”.

Like, hello, my name is Hannah Jones, and I work in the media DESPITE being fat.

Or I WILL run for trains DESPITE not wearing deodorant, theme tunes be damned.

Amanda Platell? Why don’t you just bog off ...?

noreply@blogger.com (Hannah Jones) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:55:00 +0000

I am so mad, so incensed by her insensitivity, that if I could be really bothered I’d write her a stinking letter, include a couple of pictures and my medical notes.

Oh, and a pack of pork pies.

Every day, to feed my insatiable appetite for celebrity gossip, I trawl the internet looking for titbits to chew over with my morning cup of coffee and KitKat (if I’m feeling bad) or 12 boiled eggs (if I’m on the Atkins Diet to make up for the KitKat the day before).

Last week two Daily Mail headlines assaulted my senses and piqued my interest in short shrift.
The first was Amanda Platell’s article headed, “Sorry, why should the NHS treat people for being fat?”

She writes: “Why, then, should the NHS pay for gastric bands, stomach-stapling, or expensive medication, simply because the ‘victims’ can’t be bothered to lose weight the correct way?

“I’ll wager that, if the NHS stopped offering these treatments, it would shock a huge number of the overweight into taking responsibility for their own condition, instead of seeking a miracle cure at our expense.

“Ah, say the fatties, but you can’t deny us medical treatment, any more than you can refuse to treat an alcoholic who needs liver surgery, or a smoker who develops lung cancer.

“I agree that these, too, are the result of individuals choosing an unhealthy lifestyle.

“But the crucial difference is that you cannot cure cancer by stopping smoking, nor replace a liver by becoming teetotal.

“The vast majority of the chronically overweight, by contrast, could ‘cure’ themselves simply by following a healthier lifestyle.

“Quite simply, with a cash-strapped NHS that can’t even afford to treat the dying, we must stop indulging the self-indulgent.”

Love, we’re not all big because we sit at home stuffing full English breakfasts for tea, chips as dips and fizzy drinks to wash our coffee down with.

At least I don’t.

Like the best kind of carbohydrates, it’s far more complex a situation than that.

I’m not a glutton but I know I self-medicate with food when I’m down – or elated.

It’s celebratory, it’s comforting, also a necessary evil at times when all I want to do is magic myself out of this body of mine.

Sadly, I don’t view it as something I just use to fuel my body with, and I’m sure that, for many people who have weight issues, this is also the case.

I also have a massively underactive thyroid problem which is getting worse as I get older, and I struggle to lose weight on 600 calories a day.

Trust me, I’ve tried and I’m sure many women out there have too.

I also went to the NHS to ask if I could have a gastric bypass a few years ago. They refused me, said sent me home with a fridge magnet the size of a tea plate to take home to use as a guide to portion control.

Yeah, like I don’t know that!

So I tried, I failed, I moved on, but I’m still struggling.

They don’t hand out the promise of bariatric procedures like Smarties you know.

Then came the cherry on top of the cake, the curious, “What happened when we sent a ‘fattie’ to London Fashion Week?” headline.

I instantly dipped into this as I wanted to see if the reporter’s “fatsuit” looked anything like my body (it’s waaaaaaaay better to be honest) and see what all the fuss was about.

I mean, why can’t a big bird be part of the beautiful crowd?

By the very nature of this “experiment” some bright spark somewhere, who’s never had chaffing legs obviously, thought we can’t. Charming.

It seems we’re more fatwalk and less catwalk.

As Kate Faithfull, reporting from the thick of a faithless fashion world, said in her piece: “I try willing myself to feel attractive (I’m a firm believer in confidence being the first thing anyone notices about you), but my bravado shrinks in anticipation of judgment from the fashion pack.

“These women scrutinise what others wear as seriously as Gordon Brown examines the economy.

“There is nothing to do but brazen it out.

“As I wait in the busy queue for the show, surrounded by hundreds of air kisses that aren’t aimed at me, I feel everyone’s eyes upon me. But when I try to make eye contact and smile back, the wall of pupils fixed on me roll away. I am the elephant in the room.”

Do they think that fat is catching?

They must do. I find it hard to believe that someone, somewhere, wanted to test out this theory.
Can you imagine if the test involved someone in a wheelchair? There would be uproar.

But us fatties are expected to sit back and take it on our double chins, as if our skin is as thick as our ankles.

Luckily Faithful, who turned from a size 12 to a 22 with the help of a fatsuit, was woman enough to realise this and, as a part-time big bird, had a taste of the non sugarcoated vitriol that others with a less lucky gene pool (depending on your view of course) dish out.

“Front line of fashion is not the place for me. I feel like a circus freak. I truly can’t face going to the other shows – so I run. With tears in my eyes, I bolt out into the street like a bride sprinting away from a wedding she knows will never make her happy.

“For the first time today, I feel like I can breathe again.

“I think to myself that I hope I horrified and repulsed all those snotty skinnies at the shows.

“They live in a rarefied world, and they should be forced to confront reality.”

Well said, but who cares anyway?

We all know that big girls aren’t catered for in the same way that slimsters are, but do we really need a thinnie to play fat to highlight the issue?

They could have sent me – I’m sure I would have been the only person in the backstage buffet area, which would have been payment enough.

Amanda could have been my plus one. I’m sure we’d have plenty to chat about over the celery sticks...

SEE that picture over there?

noreply@blogger.com (Hannah Jones) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 01:06:00 +0000

The one with the skinny girl in a jumpsuit? That could be me.

Honest. They do something similar in my size, even much bigger.

Up to, and including, a size 32. But who the hell would want to wear something so sausage like and unforgiving when you’re “plus” sized anyway?

Those with a lack of taste and vision I guess, and who don’t mind getting undressed to go for a wee.

I am, as you know, a cheerleader for the big and bountiful and optionally beautiful brigade, except when it comes to bestowing my own virtues as that’s a far more complicated proposition.

But I think, by and large (absolutely no pun intended), that women, regardless of what their clothes labels say, can look and feel amazing.

Just not in a jumpsuit.

Think confident in her own skin Beth Ditto – but only when she’s not bending over in a pair of tight jeans and a cropped top or singing a high C in a G-string and nothing else.

You get an idea of the kind of unfettered, lovely, fulsome and bountiful sense of self I’m talking about, something which I wish I could feel from the top of my big hair to the tips of my sensible Clarks boots.

I like to surround myself with positive role models, and it helps if they’ve got love handles you haven’t got to look for.

Those I turn to for guidance or tips on how to get bacon fat off my kitchen tiles and who may be on the skinny side usually offer me different kinds of insight, but they all have one thing in common – their don’t-give-a-b***** wisdom.

They’d tell me to stand proud and think equally capacious thoughts about myself, and ditch the ridiculously tight wringer I put myself through day in and day out as I struggle to come to terms with what I’ve allowed myself to become and how tight my trousers really are these days.

But they’d never, ever, tell me to strut my considerable stuff in anything which would be prefixed with the adjective “unforgiving”.

On Saturday, desperate for some clothes as my three pairs of black trousers are literally washed out and so short I’m think of putting jam on my ankles and inviting them down for tea, I went shopping.

That’s shopping, as in something that’s supposed to make you feel better. It’s not called retail therapy for nothing you know.

First stop, and usually my only stop unless Box2 have a sale on, was Evans.

And do you know the first thing I saw? A jumpsuit. Size 28. So plenty of room to hide both my belly, my sandwiches and good taste from the world.

Perhaps it’s really called a catsuit or the similarly titled playsuit, but regardless of its name I’m only thankful it didn’t come in PVC and an accompanying whip. It should, however, have come with a warning: “Not to be worn if you’re over a size 10, aged under 25 and your name isn’t Pixie Geldof.”

The trouble with fashion for big birds is that the stuff which suits is invariably too expensive; the things which are affordable are usually aimed at girls who don’t want to be big and whose heads are thin.

Therefore they refuse, with the determination of a dieter on a carb free plan who has been offered a pasty, to dress big.

And so zaftig jumpsuits are born.

I may be fat in the head and fat of belly, but I’m also fat on logic when it comes to dressing this stretched-beyond-reason frame of mine.

I want pretty things, I want to be able to feel feminine, I desperately want Monsoon to cater for me and every other woman out there who knows the feeling of chaffing and bra burn.

What I don’t want is to look like a fashion victim and my clothes wear me, rather that the other way around in the round.

We big girls might well go kicking and screaming into this world’s thin ideal of perfection, but even as non conformists we’d sure as hell like to look nice for the occasion.

"I'd like to have some of what she’s having,”

noreply@blogger.com (Hannah Jones) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 16:43:00 +0000

I said to my boyfriend the other day as I was, yet again, bemoaning my lack of personal funkiness when it comes to dressing.

I spied with my little eye some pictures of Beth Ditto, you see. I lovingly admired her chutzpah, faced as I was with a picture of her with flaming red pixie hair and a black and white dress which looked liked it had come from Mary Poppins’ dressing-up box.

Once upon a stone or seven, I used to have a semblance of what is commonly referred to as “having it going on”.

This meant, in everyday parlance, that I wasn’t afraid of wearing scarves in my hair, polka dotted pom-pom dresses and big wedge, peep-toe shoes.

And before anyone starts to imagine a fat Minnie Mouse but with bigger ears, let me just tell you I sometimes turned heads.

No jokes or sniggering from the back please – nobody ever asked me directions to the fun house, so I assumed I was doing something right.

These days, my fashion sense tends to lack a lack of common sense if you know what I mean.

In my mind I’m still funky, still looking for things to wear which will make me look interesting as opposed to dull in wide legged trousers and black tunics.

But in reality, I fear I’ve really become rather dull.

I know I should think less and do more, I should accessorise myself stupid and accentuate the positive in bolder ways.

I should, perhaps, dare to bare more, wear skirts, put on a bra that’s two sizes too small and bring new life into the spaniel’s ears that are now my boobs.

But... but, well, without a stylist, more money, lots of time and ability to use a sewing kit, I fear I may be stuck in this rut.

Beth Ditto, however, wants to change me – and you, if you shop in Evans that is.

My-thigh-sized Kate Moss may have the title as the most successful high street celebrity designer, but Gossip singer Beth could well rival the supermodel and eat her collection for breakfast, dinner and tea.

Rumours have circulated since last year that she was in talks with Evans to create a special line for them. And now it’s been confirmed that the collaboration is set to happen.

Sources tell me Beth has been working with Evans’ head designer Lisa Marie Peacock to create a collection that should hit the shops in June.

And if Beth’s own wardrobe is anything to go by, then this collaboration is sure to be show-stopping, and not for the faint-hearted. It may well turn those fabled heads again, but not for the right reasons.

Beth is famed for her eccentric style, including those figure hugging spangly catsuits that even Kate Moss wouldn’t dare to wear, and an array of bold sequin-encrusted dresses.

Word from the Evans camp suggests she’s given her style a high-street-friendly make-over, with the collection reportedly including oversized tees and knits, graphic dresses and studded handbags.

But will she help me get my funk back? I’m frankly split on the news.

On the one hand I think it’s amazing that big girls are able to dress any way they want.

Conversely, if you’re fat and even if you’re happy with it, catsuits and ’80s tees with drop waists and crazy patterns aren’t exactly extraneous flesh friendly.

There’s a lot to be said for being big and being proud of it, and having an inimitable, often outlandish aesthetic as a result.

But for us mere mortals who want to be more than they are but who would need to be knocked over the head with a cricket bat and concussed to think catsuits look great if you’re over a size 18, it may be a step too far.

Seeing is believing though – and as ever, I’m opened minded (as well as open mouthed).

SIXTEEN days today.

noreply@blogger.com (Hannah Jones) — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 17:07:00 +0000

.. That’s how long I’ve been on the Slim-Fast plan.

I say plan when what I really mean is hell. OK, that’s a slight over-exaggeration, but when you’re living on 600 calories worth of solids a day, there’s not much to get up for if you’re used to scheduling your days around meal-times.

It’s like being a big baby, in more ways than one.

But I’m sticking to it, I’m (kind of) positive, I’m trying to be good and I’m doing my utmost to try and think of it not as a diet but to bid to try and shrink my expectations as well as my love handles.

And dieting is all about expectations, isn’t it?

It’s about looking at your plate and not getting depressed or think nobody loves you because you’ve only got one potato. Conquer this and you’ve started to live by the most sensible diet solution of all – moderation.

And that translates in the language of sweet and savoury as have what you want, but have way less of it.

Being human and useless, however, I’m not able to do this without the use of strawberry or chocolate flavoured aids.

So I’m taking food away in order to Slim-Fast twice a day then top up the lot with a 600-calorie meal in the night.

That’s the plan at least.

Sundays are the worst, though. Because this is the day I shake-up my shake scheduling because I’m unable to eat in the night.

Normally it’s a shake for breakfast and one for lunch and the thought of food in the night gets me through the day. It’s not a problem during the working week as I’m too busy to think about food (yes, THAT frantic). On a Sunday, it’s a shake for breakfast, dinner up Mam Jones’s, then a shake for tea.

Come 5pm, I start thinking of nibbling on my own arm and start doubting my conviction as my inner cheeky demon, who I’m convinced looks like Dawn French dressed up like a candy box in a bright pink Vivienne Westwood dress, starts jabbering at me and asking what the hell I’m doing.

She appeared on Sunday while I was reading about Claire Richards’ “amazing turnaround” in one of the papers, where the former pop star went from size 20 to a 10, thanks to a strict diet.

I don’t know about you, but when I read what she had before she lost weight, I don’t know where she found the time to chew it all. It’s a million miles from what I normally eat, and I’d say I have serious issues with food and body image.

But by her standards, I ate like a bird with a wasting disease.

HER DIET BEFORE
Breakfast: Nothing.
Lunch: Large McDonalds meal and four large Cokes.
Afternoon: Three or four cakes or Belgian buns washed down with one or two of the Cokes left over from lunch.
Dinner: A three course meal in a restaurant three or four times a week or a takeaway at home. Pudding or a cake or ice cream for dessert.
Evening Snacks: Sweets.
DAILY CALORIES 5,500

HER DIET AFTER
Breakfast: Fruit with yoghurt or muesli with skimmed milk, one cup of coffee.
Lunch: Bowl of soup, home-made sandwich or oatcakes dipped in humus. Bottle of water.
Snacks: Piece of fruit or a once a week treat, diet chocolate bar under 100 calories, bottle of water.
Dinner: Chicken, fish or a piece of steak with loads of dark green veg, sweet potatoes or a calorie controlled ready meal.
DAILY CALORIES 1,500

My turn now.

MY DIET BEFORE
Breakfast: Nothing or skimmed latte and low-fat muffin if I was feeling flushed.
Lunch: Boots Shapers meal.
Snacks: Occasionally, a low fat pack of crisps or bread dipped into the following...
Dinner: Pasta with low-fat sauce, homemade.
DAILY CALORIES 1,500

MY DIET AFTER
Breakfast: Slim-Fast.
Lunch: Slim-Fast.
Snacks: Fresh air, chewed slowly.
Dinner: Chicken and bacon pasta.
DAILY CALORIES: 900.

Suddenly, I’m starving and Dawn is whispering something to me about disparities and how big people are often accused of being gutsy buggers when we’re living it less than large calorifically anyway.

Claire, though, not only cut down, she started exercising, which is the biggest and most serious life change you can make I guess.

But for now, it’s back to Slim-Fast and counting down to that 600 calories in the night.

BREAKFAST:

noreply@blogger.com (Hannah Jones) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 17:04:00 +0000

... “Delicious” strawberry or chocolate milkshake.

Lunch: More of the same.

Tea: Four chips, a chicken breast and pinch of coleslaw.

Welcome to my new Slim-Fast world.

I’ve been driven to yet another extreme form of deprivation all in the name of shopping at Monsoon and stopping my underwear trying to escape up my back and down under, if you know what I mean.

But it’s no New Year’s resolution. I cunningly got around that by starting the Slim-Fast regime on December 28.

I slipped it into my daily routine without much fanfare, not even bothering to tell anyone about it.

I eventually broke the news to my mother on Saturday, warning her that I needed to eat my Sunday dinner on a tea plate and that I intended to put my money where my shake is and cut down “to just the one Yorkshire”.

I’ve even got a brand new flask for work. While others are filling theirs with soup or sugary, sweet tea, mine has frothy pink or brown stuff in it, meal replacements which are intended to convince my belly, deluded beast that it is, that I need less food to survive.

I’ve never really tried Slimfast before, preferring a McDonald’s strawberry milkshake washed down by six chicken nuggets to two spoonfuls of a meal replacement.
But, with my trousers looking shorter and elasticated waistbands digging into my loveless handles, I knew drastic action was needed. And who has the patience for calorie counting?

Not me, which is ironic because you can’t go over 600 calories for your evening meal in case you explode. Or eat your arm off. Or something like that.

I’m trying to tell myself that I’m only doing what I’d be able to manage if I had a gastric band.

On that, you’re only allowed about 500 calories. So in the La La Land of my weight loss story, I figure I’m quids in and 100 calories up.

And two roast potatoes are two roast potatoes when you’re starving.

Ricky Gervais would be so proud of me too. Because he’s branded people who have surgery to lose weight “lazy f****** fat pigs”.

So eloquently put for someone who obviously has never had a weight issue.
Oh, hang on, it’s THAT Ricky Gervais... I take it all back then.

He’s had a right old dig at those who undergo liposuction to shed flab during a rant in his audio book The Ricky Gervais Guide To Medicine.

He said: “I really don’t know why a doctor under a Hippocratic Oath takes the risk
of something going badly wrong, sometimes with general anaesthetic, because someone can’t be bothered to go for a run.

“They have bits sliced off and tied up and sucked out. I want to say to them, ‘You lazy fat pig. Just go for a run and stop eating burgers. You might die’.

“If your a*** is too fat, stop eating and go for a run.”

The Office star also suggests a way to encourage overeaters to slim down.
The wise one said: “In supermarkets, the really fattening stuff should be behind a really thin door.

“Shops should be full of salads, but if you want to get to the pies and cakes, you’ve got to crawl through a little tube.”

Frankly, I’d rather be on Slim-Fast for the next six months.

No degradation or crawling necessary. For now at least...

I can't draw ...

noreply@blogger.com (Hannah Jones) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:46:00 +0000

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?

noreply@blogger.com (Hannah Jones) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 09:02:00 +0000

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 ...

noreply@blogger.com (Hannah Jones) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 09:22:00 +0000

... 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 ...

noreply@blogger.com (Hannah Jones) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 10:24:00 +0000

... 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 ...

noreply@blogger.com (Hannah Jones) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:56:00 +0000

... 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…

noreply@blogger.com (Hannah Jones) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:55:00 +0000

... 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 ...

noreply@blogger.com (Hannah Jones) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:54:00 +0000

... 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 ...

noreply@blogger.com (Hannah Jones) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:10:00 +0000

... 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 ...

noreply@blogger.com (Hannah Jones) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:13:00 +0000

... 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.