Hannah Jones' Diary of a Diet

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

2009-09-16T20:55:00.000-07:00

... 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 ..

2009-09-03T06:04:00.000-07:00

... 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 ...

2009-06-30T09:13:00.000-07:00

... 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 ...

2009-06-23T06:42:00.000-07:00

... 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 ...

2009-06-09T02:19:00.000-07:00

... 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” ...

2009-05-26T01:08:00.000-07:00

... 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.

2009-05-19T00:32:00.000-07:00

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 ...”

2009-05-13T00:37:00.000-07:00

... 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 ...

2009-05-05T05:49:00.000-07:00

... 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 ...

2009-04-14T01:29:00.000-07:00

... 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 ...

2009-03-25T05:14:00.000-07:00

... 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 ...?

2009-03-02T16:55:00.000-08:00

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?

2009-02-25T17:06:00.000-08:00

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,”

2009-02-10T08:43:00.000-08:00

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.

2009-01-13T09:07:00.000-08:00

.. 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:

2009-01-02T09:04:00.000-08:00

... “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 ...

2008-11-18T03:46:00.000-08:00

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?

2008-10-28T02:02:00.000-07:00

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 ...

2008-09-15T02:22:00.001-07:00

... 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 ...

2008-08-19T03:24:00.001-07:00

... 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 ...

2008-07-28T09:56:00.000-07:00

... 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…

2008-07-28T09:55:00.000-07:00

... 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 ...

2008-07-28T09:54:00.001-07:00

... 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 ...

2008-06-19T10:10:00.000-07:00

... 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 ...

2008-06-12T10:13:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2008-06-05T10:16:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, and Ryvita. And cycling.

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

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

Surprisingly unsmug and unfazed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And, about two years ago, she started cycling.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She confesses to not having lost her sweet tooth though.

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

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

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

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

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

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

2008-04-25T00:31:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I’m nothing if not original.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that’s where the similarities end for me.

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

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

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

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

So don’t feel too judgemental of old Prezza.

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

A TEXT came through on the train ...

2008-04-09T01:34:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

But unlike our love for carbs, we drifted apart.

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

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

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

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

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

“That’s nothing,” he said.

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

Oh, how I know the feeling.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2008-03-12T11:08:00.000-07:00

... said a work colleague.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But not eating for 100 days?

That takes real dedication, and real stupidity really.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So I asked her to quantify it.

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

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

“A bit like you. Only...”

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

Better looking? Fatter?

Bigger? Smarter?

Smaller? Taller?

Married with seven kids?

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

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

“She’s blonde.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Sunday, I spent £355.87 on clothes.

2008-03-05T11:07:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That was Anna’s clothes.

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

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

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

Shame I’m all spent out.

"I hated being fat,” she said.

2008-02-15T11:05:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How do you deal with it?”

(Er……)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah, maybe.

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

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

It's all in the face.

2008-02-05T01:08:00.000-08:00

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

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

2008-01-29T01:07:00.000-08:00

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

WHAT is love?

2008-01-21T01:05:00.000-08:00

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

HOW good does Fern Britton look these days?

2008-01-15T01:04:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I started building up to the New Year ...

2008-01-08T01:03:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another F word.

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

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

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

I thought I needed a “life bitch”

2007-12-18T02:34:00.000-08:00

... I assumed that would be Steve Miller.

I figured my ample figure doesn’t need the softly-softly approach to losing weight and getting myself back on track.

I need some tough love, and I hoped Stevie boy could be the one to do it.

He doesn’t come cheap though – you can book a £120 session with him where he’ll tell you in no uncertain terms how to Get Off Your Arse and Lose Weight.

That snappy attitude is also the title of his book so, cheap skate that I am – £120 can buy you a lot of pizza you know – I bought that instead.

Well, I know what’s in my book, copies of which are doubling as door stops around Wales this Christmas if I’m lucky.

And I didn’t lose any weight writing that beauty. (Sorry, I should have prefaced that as a spoiler alert as I’ve told you the ending before you’ve even picked it up. But patience, along with calorie counting, has never been a virtue of mine. I wrote a diet book. I’m still fat. The End. Hilarious! Or at least it should be. . .)

So in the same way that I alternated between Slimming World and Weight Watchers with the Atkins and Abject Misery, I decided to give the Life Bitch and his book, which is filled with what he bills as “straight talking advice on how to get thin”, a go.

But, oh dear, 33 pages in and I want to slap him. Hard enough to knock some sense into his blond little head.

I don’t know about you, but I’m loathe to take advice from some thin bloke whose idea of “tough love” or “straight talking” is to make you feel like being the F word is the ultimate sin.

It’s like going to see a slim nutritionist who tells you “to use a smaller plate, eat smaller portions, think small and you’ll be small”. Hello?!?

I’ve seen about four of the bright sparks now.

If it only was as simple as eating less and moving more, none of us would have a weight issue.

But our fat life, unlike the best kind of carbs, is more complex than that.

One man who wants to simplify the big issue of being big is the Life Bitch, a man who claims to know what it’s like to be big and be burdened by it.

He professes to know how it feels because he went up to a 36ins waist.

I DREAM of having a 36ins waist! But, kindly soul that I am, I decided to give the Gordon Ramsay of lifestyle gurus a shot.

All was going well until I started to read the book which, wen you’re following a book about diets, kind of defeats the object.

I’m only a few pages in, if truth be told, and I may change my mind about the Life Bitch – but to do that I need to pick up my (artery clogged?) heart up off the floor, look at myself in the mirror and tell her that “It’s okay to be fat as long as you remember that you’re not going to live as long as your slim and healthy friends and relations.”

I’ll follow that with a thigh rubbing, “It’s okay to be fat unless you want to be able to lead a full, active life and play with your children and grandchildren.”

Shall I carry on? Okay Han, shoulders back, head up, stomach and love handles out, “It’s okay to be fat, but remember it’s the slim and healthy people who pay for your treatment when your health fails. Why should we pay for your lack of self-control?”

Deep breaths now, hoist up those Spaniel’s ears and remember, “You know it’s not okay to be fat when every time you look in the mirror someone you vaguely remember as being you when you were slim says, ‘Let me out you fat f*****. I’ve had enough.’

“Listen to your inner voice.”

And there I was, just going to tell myself how nice my hair was today. How wrong a girl can be.

I’d like to sit with – not on (just yet) – the Life Bitch and explain to him, in sensible language, talk which comes from someone with brains but whose IQ is shoe sized when it comes to figuring out how to either get smaller or fully accepting of how I am right this minute, what it feels like to be your own worst enemy in the battle of the bulge.

To suggest, even for a second, that by “doing nothing in life, you will be nothing in life” is a motivational statement, is like saying that big = inconsequential = nothing = worthless. That all us big birds are “mistakenly stuffing themselves stupid and guzzling alcohol to feel some positive emotions”.

But the Life Bitch apparently knows better because he prefers to “inspire” his clients with vibrant motivation, applications of professional clinical hypnosis, “no-nonsense tough love and humour”.

Steve believes in “the power of laughter as this is conducive to personal change”.

I for one, this useless waste of space, drain on society, lazy good for nothing lumper that I obviously am in his mind, am not laughing.

And if there’s one thing my belly is good at, it’s being joyful when my mind is at ease with itself.

I’m going to read the rest of the book though, give it a chance like that time I did the cabbage soup diet despite knowing I can’t stand veg or the Slim Fat when milk was making me itch.

I’ll chew it over.

I’m good at that.

But this one and only time, I may think twice about swallowing.

CHRISTMAS is coming ..

2007-12-11T02:31:00.000-08:00

... and the goose isn’t the only thing that’s getting fat. Well, fatter at any rate.

I’ve stopped going to the gym – but am still paying the monthly subscription “just in case” – and the last time I went to Fat School I celebrated a 4lb weight loss with chicken fried rice and two low-fat yoghurts.

Then, three weeks ago, I started being good once again, flitting from defeat to determination with the petulant swing of the moon. Two days past, I started to slide.

Now, with Christmas around the corner, I’m at another impasse.

I’m wondering, with the kind of intensity treatises are made and broken I’m sure, if I should bother being good this side of the 25th of Indulgence.

The problem with putting the good life on hold is that you – or at least weak-willed me – tend to eat for Wales during the break from calorie-counting, points-tallying, fat-weighing, carb-avoiding tactics.

Last year, as you may recall, I was on my way to having lost a whopping, eye-lash skimming (because that’s the only place I thought I could see it had gone off) two stone.

And then came The Break.

Significant (Thin But Getting Fat ‘Cos He’s Content Now) Other took me to London for a mini break.

For months I’d been weight-droppingly good, minding my calories like a nervous first-time mother of a screaming newborn, so I decided in my lack of wisdom to just act “normally” during my few days away.

Just enjoy yourself, he said. But be sensible, he said. You just need to behave “normally”, he said.

And, to quote pencil skirt-wearing Rizzo from Grease, it really was the worst thing I could do, following that sound advice.

I can’t, you see, do “normal”. Well I can, but if I do I just put on weight because normality doesn’t equate to moderation to me.

Fat and its uglier sister defeatism attacks me like it’s never seen me before, as opposed to being attached to me since I came out kicking and screaming and asking for solids before I could gurgle “more” coherently.

As soon as I take a break from calorie crunching, I put on weight. And not just a pound here or there – I’m talking half stone rather than half measures.

A year ago I’m weighing in at nearly two stone lighter – 12 months on and I’m just 5lbs lighter than when I started.

Go on, have a read of that fat fast fact again. I’m only 5lbs lighter after all that work and denial. But bloody hell, it felt good when I was being good.

To get where I am today, though, I’ve just been blind to calories and led, as far as I can see it, a normal life.

Now I maybe a bit dim to the intricacies of logic, but even I can see what’s gone wrong there.

So as the build-up to Christmas gains momentum, it’s filled with problems for me.

Should I eat, drink and be merry with the rest of the world or should I tape my mouth up and make a sacrificial pyre out of the three Advent calendars I’ve left unopened in the house?

Today I could open the lot while musing on my decision.

Well, ’tis the season to be jolly after all (but not one to be mistaken for a grumpy Mamma Claus with more chin hair, I remind myself while chomping).

YESTERDAY was my birthday.

2007-11-28T04:53:00.001-08:00

I turned 36, 4lb lighter than when I was 35. I am, however, about four stone heavier than when I was 26, but there’s 14lb less of me than 18 months ago.

Numbers, don’t you just hate them?

I did, however, rejoice at losing said 4lb when I went back to Fat Club last week.

God knows how I did it, but back to the usual round of not mixing up carbs and proteins I went, kicking and screaming into a routine which is, let’s face it, one big exercise in denying myself stuff.

Creamy stuff. Tomato-based stuff. Stuff with burned crusts on the edges and cheesy fillings. Stuff that’s easy to make or grab on the go. Stuff that I love but which in turn hates my figure.

I was spurred on for the 765th time in my dieting life by the amazing news that Mam Jones is only 2lb away from shedding a whopping/amazing/jealousy-inducing five stones.

It’s taken her 16 months and it’s been difficult sometimes and hunger-inducing all the time.

She doesn’t like me spilling the fat-free beans on her though, so I won’t go into details about what she does (two pieces of Thin-See-Ya bread a month and good carb-busting things like that) or doesn’t do (eat much).

All I can say is she’s winning the numbers game and has started doing that thing all biggies who turn into slimmies do – and that’s start to really take pride in herself.

She does her hair every morning, is never without make-up now and, crucially, loves to shop FOR HERSELF (not just mammoth smalls for me and wide-fitting slippers for my father).

She’s always been lovely looking – and I am saying that without the aid of bias or clever cameras and muted lighting – but for years she’s been big.

But now she’s the incredible – in more ways than one – shrinking woman, and she’s putting me to shame.

As such, I’ve gone back to Fat Club to supplement my gym membership, which is going rusty.

Well, it’s cold at night, isn’t it? Then again, I’m sure I’d convince myself in a heatwave that it was too hot to go.

So it’s “back on it”, as the biggest loser of them all at Fat Club calls resuming calorie counting and what I deem hell.

What’s even more hellish, however, is that the HQ of Deluded Porkers FC is in the smell line of a Chinese takeaway up the road.

So, like some fatter Bisto kid, you float in on an aura of denial mixed with hope, buoyed by an ocean of chicken chow mein THAT YOU CAN’T HAVE.

The weight loss made up for it until I got home and realised all I could have to eat was an omelette with 42g of mozzarella (precisely) cheese and three thin slices of corned beef, while the skinny blokes in the house had chicken pie and cauliflower cheese.

Then, to add insult to my injurious cellulite, as I was nibbling Trinny & Susannah came on the telly to discuss body shapes. The style experts, who are both a size 10 – bitches – maintain that whatever your size, you always fit into one of 12 body shapes, and they aim to show women how to dress to flatter.

The golden dozen are broken down into four main groups – apple, hourglass, triangle and pear.

So there I was, watching a masterclass on shapes with Hiya Love and Significant (thin, but getting a bit of belly) Other when we set about finding out which shape yours truly was.

“You’re a cello,” piped up Hiya Love, who was once a fashion expert (well, he worked in Principles and Wallis on the shoes).

“Nah, she’s a papple,” argued S(t)O. “It’s not an apple and not quite a pear, but a mixture of the two – belly, bum, boobs, a waist, nice and tall with big hair.”

To say I was gutted was an understatement, cello-looking papple that I am. But at least I wasn’t a full-on pear, brick, peach or skittle. And thank God I’m not a cornet or lollipop.

The way I’m feeling today, I fear I might be arrested for licking myself.

I’ve joined a gym ...

2007-11-07T09:53:00.000-08:00

... anyone fainted?

It’s a proper gym too, not just a FisherPrice one – full of big hunks and weights, iron-clad machinery, women with pert boobs who manage to stay firm-bottomed and perfect while sweating, loud music and the smell of exhausting under every bouncy black mat.

And then there’s me in the midst of it all, not so much a fish out of water but the token fattie in a room full of pecked perfection.

I’ve only been signed up for a week, but I’ve been thinking about going for ages.

I do lots of thinking, me; housemate Hiya Love says I could think for Wales, think for Britain, think myself out of doing anything constructive while lying supine on the settee with the cat on my lap.

I’ve also given up the fags, my mentholated peacemakers in rows of 20.

But that wasn’t much of a hardship as I’ve always been an “associated” smoker rather than a social one or someone who craved a hit.

When I’m relaxed I have a cup of tea, so I’d always add two cigarettes with my three sugars.

Lunchtimes it’s coffee time, sat on the roof of the coffee shop during my lunch hour, kicking back with a short skinny latte and maybe three breaths of death.

So I’ve stopped drinking tea and coffee and going over the coffee shop at lunch time.

I’ve amended my behaviour in order to kick the habit.

Proud of me? I’m slightly pleased with myself, but although I don’t have any cravings – told you I wasn’t addicted – I know I’m only one crisis away from smoky treat, a good mood away from a celebratory puff.

But as off today, I’m off the fags and I’m going to the gym.

It took some doing, getting me to sign up for the latter. As I said, the idea had been ruminating in my noodle for some time – I’d even gone so far as to look around it before handing over my credit card.

I walked away with the joining form and mulled it over while in Pizza Hut. Yes, Pizza Hut.

While there, eating three slices of the Chicken Supreme (that tight sod otherwise known as my Significant (thin) Other ordered and we had a medium BETWEEN THE TWO OF US) I scoured the small print to see if I could find something which could make me wiggle my way out of it.

And there it was – I was obliged to stay for the year, despite some ditsy bugger with a washboard belly telling me otherwise when I went in for the scout around.

“No you can leave any time,” she said. “But would you want to? Don’t you really want to commit? Because as the song says, if you’re wise you’ll exercise all the fat off.”

I don’t know what song she was referring to, but I don’t think that line was in the chorus of Food, Glorious Food.

Since then, you’ll be pleased to know, I’ve managed to convince myself that doing a bit of exercise, whatever the level, will do me good.

Smart, eh?

That said, my first trip into muscle beach was fraught with problems, ranging from what trousers I should wear to my lack of footwear and get-up-and-go mindset.

But walk in I did, purposively taking off my glasses so I couldn’t see either myself (sweating like a bullock) or anyone else watching me.

Nobody batted an eyelid, I’m happy to report. Thankfully, their vanity was my salvation because, let’s face it, the majority of gym trims are there because they either want to look good or they’re busily on their way to topping up their allure.

A big bird dying after two minutes on the treadmill and three seconds on the cross trainer doesn’t enter their orbit.

And for this week at least, concern about what other people may say/think/feel about me doesn’t enter my round world either.

I WONDER ....

2007-10-29T09:08:00.000-07:00

... if hiccuping is my body’s way of telling me not to chew, or at least swallow.

For normal people, whose lives aren’t dictated by the eating/not eating conundrum, I’m sure they just think it’s an inconvenience.

They’d wait until the involuntary spasm of their diaphragm stopped, and then move on with what they were doing before.

Chances are it wouldn’t have been, like in my case, walking past Greggs and wondering if two cheese-and-onion pasties would be breaking the dieting law, even considering that I’d had nothing to eat that day and it was 3.27pm.

But as I approached the window of joy, I felt a sudden rush of air into my lungs which caused my epiglottis to close – yes, I started hiccuping.

The trouble with hiccuping when you’re as big as I am (no letters from smaller sympathisers please) is that you look like you’re doing a belly laugh. Only it’s no joke.

When big girls really chortle and let rip, it’s a beautiful sight. Normally it’s unfettered, throaty and uncensored.

But something also happens to that one bit of ourselves we can’t stand to be associated with but which follows us around like a gutsy lunatic.

Our bellies convulse, shake, rattle and roll about, jabbing their way further forward – if possible – into the world.

They thrust the unthrustable onwards, which means our big bums are left playing catch-up, our big behinds trailing behind.

We hiccup, and the world holds its breath, and if you’ve got that cough-wee association going on like I do, Pampers makes a mint.

I read, though, that one possible beneficial effect of hiccups is to dislodge foreign pieces of food.

I don’t know about you, but I know exactly what goes in my mouth, and none of it’s a stranger. And I’m fully conversant in the language of Carbs.

Anyway, the boffins say, “When a piece of food is swallowed that is too large for the natural peristalsis of the oesophagus to move the food quickly into the stomach, it applies pressure on the phrenic nerve, invoking the hiccup reflex.

“This causes the diaphragm to contract, creating a vacuum in the thoracic cavity, which creates a region of low pressure on the side of the lump of food nearest the stomach, and a region of high pressure on the side of the lump of food nearest the mouth.

“This lungs differential across the food creates a force, which assists peristalsis.

“In humans, gravity partially assists peristalsis, but in quadrupeds and many marine vertebrates, their oesophagi run roughly perpendicular to the force of gravity, so gravity provides little assistance.

“The hiccup mechanism likely evolved as an aid to peristalsis in our ancestors.”

Or, if you take me as an example, it’s what happens when you forget to chew a custard slice and appear to swallow it whole. Yes, vipers have nothing on me.

People are always banging on to me about why I should listen to my body.

Then, they say, I’ll only eat when I’m hungry and stop when I’m full.

I must be deaf then. I know I’m blind to the notion of my allure, and it seems I’m also devoid of another sense, in the “common” sense of the term.

I spent about a month listening to a Paul McKenna CD, one which would help me gain control of my diet.

All I got at the end of the four weeks was a dislike for an Essex accent.

For all my gesticulating, though, I don’t often eat cakes or pasties or really, really bad things.

But I do binge and fall into a vat of self-negation as I mentally step over a sea of empty wrappers and mountain of breadcrumbs from a fresh cob stuffed down my gob, actions which cruelly make me binge all the more.

And I was bingeing while musing on pasties and the fact I told my Significant (thin) Other I was going to go back to Fat Club (again...) next week.

I realise now that at the same time – I think I must have been semi-unconscious or in a flaky pastry daze – I was attempting to swallow the custard slice. Width ways.

It was then that the hiccups started.

I didn’t go back to the office to ask someone to startle me, drink water through a cloth or hold my breath.

But there is something to be said for eating a spoonful of sugar/honey/peanut butter while waiting for nature to take its course.

Me at Baglan library ...

2007-10-19T09:40:00.001-07:00

... where I "entertained bookworms in a funny, frank and hilarious fashion" (apparently!)

I doubt that anyone ...

2007-10-10T07:40:00.000-07:00

... would say on their deathbed, “You know, I wish I’d spent more time on the internet.”

They may, however, say, while facing down the gates of heaven which are more chewing gum white after a lifetime of bad living than pearly, “If only I’d had more ice-cream.”

Someone sent me an email asking me to think about that the other day. It came from a VERY fancy author, one of the biggest selling in the UK let alone Wales.

She was blathering on about how much she enjoyed my book but – there’s always a big BUT isn’t there, especially when us big girls turn around and catch sight of the trailer trash that is our derriere – she couldn’t understand the way I treat myself in its pages.

It’s the same old story, moans about why I spilled my ample guts in such a way, and why I beat myself up about my perceived limitations and weaknesses, especially around homemade lasagne and chips.

“But you’re lovely just the way you are,” she threw at me from the safety of her size 14 zone.

“A friend of mine spent a lifetime dieting and never seemed to be satisfied with the way she was, even though everyone said she was lovely. And do you know what she said to me before she died? ‘If only I’d had more ice-cream.’ You want to think about that.”

And think about that I did, for a few minutes at least.

I thought, yep, she’s right – why am I ruled by my weight? Why do I allow myself to weigh out my self-esteem by how many pieces of bread I have a day?

So I did what any self- respecting professional dieter would do after an epiphany – I ate my lunch at 27 minutes past nine. In the morning, you understand.

I got up off my now beautiful arse and walked towards the tiny fridge in work which seemed to be filled by two of my rolls, grabbed the one, took it to my desk and started to unwrap the foil which was hiding away my hope and fears in one tiny bundle of egg and cress in a Tiger Roll comforter.

And I ate, I chewed, I bit down on more eggy cressness while the years of weight watching confusion suddenly cleared.

And then… and then… and then… I broke a tooth. While I’m digesting this new twist in my sobriety, the sheer force of my hunger to right my lifetime of wrongs – and, okay, eat for Wales before anyone noticed I was having my lunch for breakfast WITH my breakfast – my greed backfires big style.

Agony is NOT the word; but I still managed to chew the other one on the right hand side while my left canine was split in half and digging into the root of my mouth. I’m nothing if not resourceful.

The next day, having spent the night celebrating my return to toothy form with a quart of Green & Blacks ice-cream, my new sense of equilibrium was tested in the most cruel of ways.

No, I didn’t have to have a medical, wear Lycra, run a mile, go braless, go sleeveless and straighten my hair – I had to go and interview singer Katherine Jenkins.

She’s lovely, is Kath, really down to earth and chopsy.

She’s also as big as my wrist and just about comes up to my belly (and you know how a girl hates drawing attention to that… she’s so small she could hide under it to avoid a tan).

The diminutive diva opened the door to me, threw her arms around me and said – yes, without a smirk on her flawless face – “Han, you look so glam! You look amazing.”

Honest to God, that’s what she said – Size Dwt, perfectly formed, not a hair out of place Jenkins.

And what did I say? “Shut up Kath… I came on the bus, my legs are chaffing, I’ve had two fags and been spraying Samsara like there’s no tomorrow all over me to disguise it, my knickers are too tight, you’ve got a hairdresser and make-up artist doing the magic on you this morning so forgive me if I start to involuntarily twang during our interview, and I put fake tan on this morning instead of foundation cream.”

She asked about my book (“What’s it about?” Me being fat. “You’re not fat.” Shut up Kath, I think you must have one eye in Brynmawr, the other in Tonteg. “You’re so funny.” And you’re so tiny.)

If there’s anyone in the world who can silently remind you that having too much ice-cream could be a bad thing, it’s her.

But that didn’t stop me from trying out the nerve endings on my newly-repaired gnashers with a 99 and two Flakes on the bus back to reality.

I didn't buy her video,

2007-10-01T04:37:00.000-07:00

... but that’s only because it wasn’t in Tesco when the need to be educated inch by inch by Jade Goody came over me.

It didn’t last long, like many of my good intentions.

But this one day, thinking that I’d try yet another scam to get myself fit and feeling fabulous again, I thought I’d give the girl a try.

But Jade’s Shape Challenge and me wasn’t meant to be.

I got Gaynor Faye’s fitness DVD instead, but gave up on that as a bad lot when housemate Hiya Love had an asthma attack watching me do fake skating on the bathroom mat and star jumps in the kitchen. Not a pretty sight.

Besides, I was thankful it wasn’t on the shelves because I can’t stand her voice, the same voice that once declared the Mona Lisa was painted by someone called Pistachio, Rio de Janeiro was a “person”, Mother Theresa “is from Germany”, Portugal was “in Spain”, “East Angular is abroad”, “Saddam Hussein was a boxer” and “I may not be the sharpest tool in the sandwich box.”

Anyway, guess what I learned today?

Miss Goody has been a bit of a baddie because she’s about to appear on Tonight with Sir Trevor McDonald (as an aside, how dull is that man?) and reveal that when she dropped two dress sizes, it wasn’t really down to her evangelical jumping about.

Nope, mouth almighty was actually addicted to slimming pills.

Jade will spill the salt-free, low-fat beans to Sir Trevor about her desperation to shed the pounds after becoming famous on Big Brother back in 2002.

As you may recall, Jade was originally nicknamed Miss Piggy after her stint in the BB house, but after leaving the show she slimmed down and, of course, made the fitness video.

An insider from Camp Goody is quick to insist that although Jade’s weight has increased rapidly since her controversial appearance on Celebrity BB, she has not resorted to slimming pills again.

This in turn prompted one online women’s magazine to gloat, “We feel so cheated, here we were tirelessly working out to our ‘Let’s get fit, and get dancing’ vid, and all along she was just popping pills. Bloomin’ cheek!”

Is that what you think? Are you of the opinion that she in some way cheated her audience?

Well, okay, so you may have a point. But – and here’s the big question – would you take slimming pills if you could get your pudgy little hands on them?

I would. And I have. And they didn’t work.

I’ve tried them a few times – from appetite suppressants to those blue babies which make you “expel” fat in not the most pleasant of ways.

Nothing worked on me. Mam Jones says it’s because I’ve got the constitution of a horse. (Sadly, my arse is the size of one too.)

I can’t berate Jade for doing what she thought she needed to do for the press to take her seriously. They don’t take pictures of fat birds, do they?

She may have fallen out of favour since her last and disastrous BB outing, but there’s no denying that since she first left the house as a gobby blonde in a tight pink dress, she’s not done too bad for herself.

It doesn’t matter how she did it, but she is still a lot slimmer. She’s a glossier brunette, with an on/off 19-year-old boyfriend, two sons aged three and two from a previous relationship, her own perfume, two fitness videos, a property portfolio, and a fortune in the bank from interviews and photoshoots with magazines and highly lucrative appearances in other reality TV shows such as What Jade Did Next and Celebrity Driving School.

She even ousted Victoria Beckham from the cover of celebrity-obsessed Heat magazine, struck up an unlikely friendship with Kate Moss (Jade, according to showbiz sources, has been invited to several parties at the supermodel’s home), and was recognised by Samuel L Jackson when the two found themselves on the same plane.

And why? It’s not her brain power is it. Nope, it’s because she lost weight and glammed up a bit.

And everybody loves a good diet story. Right?

The same goes for another Big Brother contestant, this time Welsh wonder Laura “Wangers” Williams.

She’s also decided to try to slim down because she’s been told she won’t get any big deals – or those prerequisite bikini shots in lads’ mags which really bring in the big bucks – because she’s not thin enough, a typical object of desire.

Laura says she’s determined to lose weight, tone up and get the kind of work “slimmer” BB exes bag.

“I’m trying to lose weight to get more work,” is how she put it to me when we met recently, gym gear at her side, in a Cardiff restaurant where we enjoyed a dieter’s dream lunch of cheese-loaded potato skins, cheesy garlic bread, full fat pop, onion rings and coleslaw.

“I’ve been told by loads of people that it will get me more work, see. Think about it – people like Chanelle (the Victoria Beckham wannabe from this year’s show) and others like her have had bikini shots in the magazines. Has anyone asked me? You’ve got to be joking. And I’m not all that big!” she points out.

“I’ve just got big boobs. To be honest, I don’t really care about what I look like,” an innocent’s grasp of irony seeping into her conversation once again.

“My agent – I got one for going on the show – tells me people like looking at nice-looking people. I don’t think I need to lose weight to look nice, but there you are. I’ve lost about a stone so far I think and want to get to under 10 stone. Anyway, perhaps I won’t like the thin Laura. Perhaps she’ll be boring and I’ll hate the skinny me. I’m living on fresh air and water these days.

“The press were cruel though. This woman in The Sun was talking about me and Shabnam in the shower, wondering how she managed to fit in there with me in there too, cheeky cow.

“Well I may be fatter than that writer, but she’ll always be ugly.”

I don’t think La Wangers has resorted to the pills in order spill the flab. Yet.

But I know what desperation tastes like. And sadly it always comes super sized.

Wouldn't it be great to feel happy?

2007-09-21T02:41:00.000-07:00

You know, in your skin, just as you are, flab ‘n’ all happy.

I want that feeling so bad sometimes I can almost taste it. Taste, though, is my problem. Keeping a grip on the joy vibe is also up there on my checklist of things I’m crap at. It’s telephone directory size, as thick as my love handles and as incomprehensible at a quick glance.

So let’s cut to the chase and let me ask you one meaty question: How true to yourself are you? Can you stand up and say you’re dissatisfied with the way you or things in your life are? Are you honest?

I am. And it’s a big, big problem. Emotionally speaking, I’m as crumbly as Cheshire cheese. But I know that, and I can easily talk about why that is the case.

What I’m not prepared for, however, is how this attitude affects those closest to me. Let’s step back a bit though, and follow this through to its logical conclusion.

Last week, as I try to sell myself and my book based on these columns by being something of a media tart, I had a sniff of appearing in one of the nation’s biggest selling weekly women’s magazines.

This mag, which shall remain anonymous, loved my pictures, loved my story, loved my book, loved my attitude, loved me so much I could have been made out of chocolate instead of looking like I’ve been living on caravan-sized bars of the stuff for the past 35 years.

My publisher, my friends, the girls in work were whooping for joy at the thought of the book finally – finally! – reaching people over the Bridge. This could be IT, they all salivated – the kind of “it” that would put me up there with the literary greats. Yes, the people who wrote the Slimming World manual. So I was all set, ready for my BIG media break, even considering having my hair cut for the pictures, even if they were of me straddling a chip pan fryer.

And then… and then… and then came another email.

“We still want to do the feature,” it said. “But we want to make sure you’re okay with the angle we’re taking. You are, aren’t you, fine with your body? You’re at peace, right? You’ve stopped dieting and think you’re fabulous. You’re a size 16-18, yeah? You’ve finally accepted yourself the way you are. Agreed?”

Er, no. Not exactly. So, what would you do in my situation?

On the one hand, you’ve got your publisher breathing down your neck to do whatever it takes to sell books, got people’s well wishes to deal with, plus the added pressure of feeling that if you admit to feeling fine about yourself, wouldn’t you have spent the last god knows how many years living a lie? Wouldn’t the basic plot of the book – the ups and down of my dieting life, the way it has ALWAYS affected my self-esteem and outlook on life – then be a sham? Just like the time I tried to live on cereal for a week.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t pretend to be happy and content as I am when, let’s face it, every day is a battle with myself. Do you know what I mean?

I was gutted, but if you can’t be true to yourself, what do you have left?

Chicken fajitas, Green and Blacks with orange bits in and a burger from the Hard Rock Café for a start (at least that’s what I consoled myself with after the second email).

But – and here’s the rub – being true to who I FEEL I am has other consequences.

They also hurt my mother.

The other day I was on the radio, the Jamie and Louise Show on Radio Wales, talking about Diary of a Diet: A Little Book of Big. We laughed, we had fun, we had chocolate ice-cream for god’s sake.

After the show, I called Mam Jones thinking she would shower me with praise about how wonderful/funny/fantastic/ insightful I had been. Instead she picked up the phone in tears, wondering why my “act” – for want of a better description about being a Z-list fat “celebrity” – is based on putting myself down.

As Jo Brand says in the foreword to my book, you might as well have a laugh about who and what you are, if who and what you are is bigger than those who are having a laugh at your expense anyway.

I tried to articulate this to the world’s number one Han Fan, otherwise known as my mother, but nothing would assuage her. As far as she’s concerned, her pride at me – her daughter with the job, the achievements, the book, the big eyes and big hair – isn’t dependent on the success I get from being a “fat” author. Which means she’s unable to listen to me having a laugh at why I love corned beef rolls, the comedy of errors that has been my love life and the way I can easily self-negate when it comes to worshipping at the altar of carbohydrates.

“You’re as good as anyone else,” were her words, radio turned to off. “You’re as lovely, as beautiful, as clever, as good damn it. Why do you have to put yourself down all the time?”

“But Mam…”

“But Mam bloody nothing. To me you’ll always be a little girl holding my hand, the funniest little thing with the biggest eyes and the widest smile. You are more than the numbers on a bloody scales. You are my daughter. And I love you. I’m proud of you. But I won’t listen to you do this to yourself, however funny people might think you are.”

I felt like a porn star, the kind of person who has to keep what they do from the people they love because they know it’ll hurt them.

The irony, of course, is that by not admitting I feel more than I do about myself, that my self-esteem is fatter, I’ve ruined my chance of reaching more people who’ve weighed out their self-esteem along with their chips.

I told Mam Jones about the woman’s mag conundrum and she understood, said I shouldn’t sell myself out or admit to being less than I am. Go figure.

But somehow, doing the opposite doesn’t seem to be enough today either.

Imagine for a second ...

2007-09-04T07:06:00.000-07:00

... a glossy magazine has decided you’re important enough to do a big spread on you.

Let’s say, for example, you are the kind of famous which warrants five colour pages of pictures and copy, numerous costume changes and you looking all loved up with your other half.

You’re not famous enough to warrant a front cover or get a big chunk next to Madonna’s hand vein specialist, or anything like that.

But, because you were once “up there” with the greats, such as Atomic Kitten and Bewitched, you’re still big enough to get arse-end coverage, your status now resigned to starting on page 94.

Claire Richards, who was once a Deeper Shade of Blue in the pop group Steps, found herself in this situation in last week’s OK! magazine when the crew went round her house to take pictures of her, partner Reece Hill and newborn baby Charlie.

Ostensibly there to mark the birth (and give the rest of us a good nose through their house), once they clapped eyes on her they appeared to be more interested in one thing: Claire’s gone fat.

Bandmates Ian ‘H’ Watkins – the Welsh one – Faye Tozer, Lisa Scott-Lee – oops, sorry, I forgot she’s from Rhyl – and Lee Latchford-Evans continued to live their lives in the spotlight, it seems that “shy Claire”, instead of bathing in the flashes of paparazzi bulbs, has spent her time eating cake off radar.

Happy as a pig in the proverbial she might have been, but because she’s had to face the cameras once again, her chocolate covered love-ins are apparent for all the world to see.

Now me being me, and seeing with two big bold eyes instead of seeing through a judgmental skinny lens, can safely say she doesn’t look as fit as she did when she was the main “voice” of Steps.

Sue me, but she doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean she looks awful. She just looks like a happy, size-16-plus-new-mum.

Everyone knows that people are, by and very bloody large, more attractive when they’re smaller.

But – and here’s the clincher – if there wasn’t a picture printed alongside the piece to remind us of her slim days in Steps, you’d just think, oh, there’s a nice looking girl.

But not the writers at the magazine. Nope, they went to town on the fact she’s put on loads of weight, kindly souls that they are.

Of course they do all the invariable oohing and aaahing over the baby, asking the inevitable questions about late nights, the shock of giving birth and celebrity godparents.

And then, after lulling the poor dab into a false sense of security, they go in for the kill.

From asking “how is the nappy changing?” they clomper stomper their way through with, “Are you planning to lose the baby weight in record time like most celebs, Claire?”

Nice, eh?

“I really want to lose the weight, but I’m not good without help,” said the singer, obviously choking on her family-sized bar of Galaxy.

“I have no discipline. I used to be in my Steps days and was happy to starve myself for a week.

“But I can’t do that any more. I try not to eat bad food, but it was my birthday a couple of weeks ago and I ate most of my birthday cake and the leftovers.

“When I was in Steps the routines would make it easy to stay trim.

“In fact, I got quite obsessed with trying to be slim and I didn’t go about it in the healthiest of ways. I never had an eating disorder, I just didn’t diet the best way – I’d eat one meal a day, which was stupid because I needed energy to do all those routines.

“Back then, I always thought I was the fat one in Steps. Now I look back and think, God, I wasn’t like that at all!”

We’ve all done it, haven’t we? Got obsessed about dieting, losing weight, keeping fit, eating, not eating, weighing out your chips along with your self-esteem.

Look at me – I’m back in diet class after saying I’d never go again, wondering if this plan, one of the many, will be THE ONE to help us move on with the basic art of living.

Or, and here’s a novel idea, it could be the plan which breaks the camel’s back of my dieting life, and we I accept myself as I am, warts ‘n’ flab ‘n’ imperfections ‘n’ all.

Claire, bless her, is even asked what she weighs, if she’s “down” about being the newly crowned queen of the Pop Star Gone To Seed gang and if – IF – she’d lose weight IF her boyfriend proposed to her.

They might as well have asked her to pull her heart out and let the skinny stylist stick her stillies in it then kick it around the room.

“Well I won’t go wedding dress shopping until I’ve lost the weight. I’d hate it.

“You have to look fabulous,” she says.

As if fabulous is measured in Pronuptia. Then again...

A RIGHT old jumble of thoughts ...

2007-08-28T02:35:00.000-07:00

... mixing up along chaotically with the fat free strawberry yoghurt I had for breakfast. So big I think the Amercians would call it a cart. Or a quart. Whatever, it was massive.

Here’s what’s rumbling (sadly, it’s never my belly).

I’ve put on weight. I knew I had. I can just sense these things, like a half baked psychic, heavy on the sick.

The grand total of my dietary shortcomings is 8.5lbs. That’s in two months, which is how long it’s been since I last went to Fat Club.

I know it’s just over half a stone because I went back to Han Reunited FC last Monday, new (fat and thin) faces filled with hope lining up for a go on the scales.

FC teach, the biggest loser of them all in the best possible way, called me up to say welcome back. I said I’d put on 8.5lbs as my hello. She said not to worry. I said it was OK for her to say that, she’s lost 76876 of the buggers.

But to make her point, she said she’d been on holidays and put on 9.5lbs. That’s more than me, in case you’re rubbish at maths.

Since I last saw you, I asked. No, she said. Since holidays. Had you been away for two months, then? Two weeks, she said again. “I put on 9.5lbs in two weeks. It’s the b****** chocolate and lager. So you haven’t done so bad. God, I’m depressed.”

Chocolate and lager, not my weaknesses but I know that if I drank (I don’t) or was a chocoholic (I like a sneaky bar of Dairy Milk with the best of them, but it’s not a hankering) I’d be on her team.

I felt better, for a moment. Thinking that even if the biggest loser can put on - and she knows all the rules of the game, down to even having a special container with only her milk allowance in the fridge - I’m not as bad/crap/useless/human as I felt.

So I had two packets of crisps - low fat, in case you were wondering - to celebrate being so, well, human.

Anyway, two months ago I said to myself, as I tend to do in moments of clarity, that I’d try really, really hard to lose some more weight before my book launch, this coming Saturday in Cardiff (Waterstone‘s noon-2pm; WH Smith, 3pm-4pm if you‘re interested in having a copy and a free donut). So that I could go shopping in that magical land called ANYWHERE and pick up something nice.

My book’s out officially on Monday, based on these columns of mine. To give it its full title it’s Diary of a Diet: A Little Book of Big.

And guess what? I’m 8.5lbs heavier that I was two months ago. I’m so good at being bad I feel like a national treasure, so much so my face should be on tea towels so the Japanese tourists can take me home as a memento of What Not to Stuff when they come to Wales and fancy over-indulging on the Welsh fudge.

So what to wear to the launch? Something dramatic, Significant (thin) Other suggested. I reminded him that you can’t get Juicy couture in sour sized. Or the Fat ‘n’ Fabulous range in Principles.

A trip to Cardiff, then, to visit the Big Five of My Big Life - Chesca, Elvi, Anne Harvey, Box 2 and Evans, the total sum of my plus sized shopping experience.

Evans - sale stuff along one side of the shop, an abundance of leisure wear and stuff fat clubbers could make silly in. So, as you can imagine with one down and four shops left to go, disappointment started to jab.

Chesca - fine if you like glitzy cropped tops or were going to a wedding and didn’t mind going see-through.

Elvi and Anne Harvey - I’m 35, not 205.

Box 2 - £250 later I have two tops. Sufficiently dramatic, S(t)O panders. Hmpf, I tell myself, I think I look like Jo Brand dressed by Trinnie and Susannah I slam at him. Yes but Jo Brand liked your book so much she wrote its foreword, he tries again. (But my feet are hurting, thwarting anything getting through to my ears.) So, I goad, knowing how much he hates shopping for himself, what are you going to wear?

S(t)O, whose look is more crumpled Englishman abroad when he gives a damn, said we’d go to M&S.

To find a suit which looked like it belonged to an Englishman abroad, I ventured?

If they have it, he scowled.

S(t)O has the very same problem as me - he can’t find clothes to fit him as he’s the opposite end of the normality scale.

I’m fat, big bellied, tall and big boobed; he’s thin, flat bellied, tall with shoulders which Duncan Goodhew would covet, ones which he hates and I love.

I watch as he gets frustrated with himself, rally at the designers, wonder why he can’t get quirky in the long legged and lovely and big shouldered bloke’s section of M&S.

It’s like watching myself after a lifetime of being forced fed testosterone on rye.

Just try something on, I gently coax. Then came the clincher.

His “You don’t know what it’s like to be thin.”

No, I thought to myself, if you let yourself go and had three tidy meals a day, you’d slide into the normal zone.

And if I let myself go (even further), I’d need a vat of Vaseline to get my big fat arse through the swinging doors of the Last Fat Chance Saloon.

I’ve been crying today.

2007-08-21T02:41:00.000-07:00

How many people tell you when they’re really down?

To be honest, I don’t give a stuff about being the kind of girl who doesn’t wear her heart on her sleeve.

Remember, as a big bugger, I’m always in sleeves. I’m never bare armed.

That should tell you something about my emotional and mental well-being.

I know what’s caused it. I just don’t care much about acknowledging it. That’s my problem.

Yet, curiously, I know that if I don’t these peaks and troughs are going to continue to litter my life like the flakes of the FOUR bread rolls I ate in the car home from my mother’s the other day.

She gave me them to share out with Significant (thin) Other and housemate Hiya Love, along with some boiled ham.

But by the time I’d got to Morrisons on the top road in Ebbw Vale, two minutes away, I’d managed to light a fag while filling the buttered beauties with ham (AND pick out the fat and scary red bits) while driving.

I juggled guilt for a bit in the one hand too. Good, eh? I should be in the circus, me.

Then I had to walk into the house and mime to Hiya Love, like some half baked Lionel Blair, that I’d had all the food on the way down, making sure he knew what to say if Mam Jones phoned.

I also didn’t want S(t)O to get the gist of the exchange. Not that he’d mind, I don’t think – it’s just that he’s already seen me around the house without a bra on, I didn’t want to run the risk of him seeing me without my marbles.

The strange thing about tears, and about emotional razor blades in general, is that once you’re all cried out, when you’re free of the slump, you forget the real texture of sorrow.

All you know is that you had a feeling, a sensation so blue it was almost pornographic.

I’m like that now, oddly nostalgic – and starving – a few hours into my recovery time.

I don’t feel sad right at this very moment, but I am left with a real sense of palpable frustration with myself.

I can feel it, just like I feel my trousers getting tighter as a result of the indifference I’ve been suffering for the last few months, the type which manifests itself in crazy car journeys and dawn fridge raids.

Add another four rolls to my tally and I figure I’m now about 6,775 steps back from when I started to regain my sense of self by losing two stone off its carb-covered casing.

Things/stuff/comments, call exterior forces what you like, have conspired to make me feel like screaming at myself or apples, anything around me really, for being so bloody useless and self-defeating.

The rolling around with the rolls didn’t spark my most recent fall from the grace of personal equanimity, though. They were just the topping.

A tight bra, an evening out in a fashionable bar, an email which said “stop putting yourself down... you’re beautiful inside and out” (talk about missing the point of these columns), and someone getting upset about me never socialising with friends has me reeling.

I’m also facing up to the fact that I’ve put on weight, so much so that my cheeks are playing a game of kiss catch with my fringe.

It’s not hard for me to be candid about my weaknesses, or at least what I perceive them to be.

I’m so used to being so utterly uncomfortable in my own skin most of the time, it’s natural for me to talk about the unease when asked. It’s an almost light-hearted swipe at myself. But others don’t quite see it that way.

When I try to articulate this to people who are concerned about my well-being, those who prattle on about my weight NOT being an issue (Newsflash: It Is To Me), they don’t seem to like my answers to their questions.

“Why do you so rarely go out?” friends ask.

“Because I get so uncomfortable, especially after work and following a sneeze and wee session while everyone else appears to have dropped in after a make-up session heaven,” I tell them as they scowl.

“Why are you so hard on yourself?” someone else prattles.

“Because it’s so easy and I’ve got a leak in the self-confidence department,” I answer.

“But you LOOK confident, you ARE confident, you’re the life and soul when you do go out,” they reason.

Yeah, and Irony’s my mother’s other skinny daughter, this only fat child sometimes thinks to herself.

Can I just dispel ...

2007-08-14T02:45:00.000-07:00

... a fat fact from the get go? Big birds don’t get up in the morning, step out of the shower and reach for an eclair before the deodorant.

It’s an urban myth, right up there with it’s not what you look like on the outside but how beautiful your heart is, or some such cereal packet absurdity.

Don’t you just love it when people assume that all you do is stuff your face all day long if you’re on the upper side of fabulous? Speaking as a card carrying member of the Fat ‘n’ Flawed gang, I’m too busy working out which diet plan I’m on from one minute to the next (depending on if I fancy carbs, cream cakes or taking up jogging) to think about what people really think about my eating habits or lifestyle choices.

To set the record straight, I have a really balanced diet – if you take that to mean a doughnut in each hand.

Seriously though, I eat well – I just sometimes eat too much of the good stuff. I’m also lazy, but I have the occasional spurt of activity.

I just forget to keep sight of the much bigger picture that is a healthier, fitter, more attractive me. In effect, I’m thin on balanced thinking.

Anyway, another fact about fat has been crushed this week which says that there’s no such thing as a naturally slim woman.

I’m reluctant to believe it though, that some of my thin gal pals aren’t naturally built that way despite stuffing themselves with all they like, and boozing too (at least that’s one sin I’m not guilty of).

I mean, if I ate and binged like they do, doesn’t it follow that I should be shaped like them?

Round’s a shape, right?

I have this relative who’s an egg-timer-shaped size 12 and she is positively dangerous around gateau.

Her idea of a good meal is an industrial-sized packet of pick‘n’mix followed by a pastie, McDonald’s ecstatic meal and ice-cream (mountain, not cone).

Apparently though, there’s no such thing as the skinny gene – just thin secrets, to which I obviously haven’t been privy to.

Genetics expert Dr Liz Kingsley has spent the last few years researching why some women seem to stay slim effortlessly while the rest of us chubby-faced mortals appear to balloon by feet around the belly area, rather than age-induced inches.

And her conclusion? Nobody’s born slim, but star figures belonging to bootylicious Tyra Banks to toothpick tastic Victoria Beckham are the result of hard work, not some genetic predisposition.

The brainbox says, “Many people believe they are a victim of genetics, particularly since the ‘fat gene’ was discovered earlier this year.

“This gene, which makes people more prone to store fat, affects one in six.

“However, our genes haven’t changed in centuries – one in six of our grandparents had this gene too, yet far fewer people were obese then.

“People with that fat gene are only predisposed to carry an extra 6lb, which can’t account for the current obesity crisis. The problem is down to lifestyle, not genetics.” It follows, then, that since these genes haven’t made you fat or plump or looking like you’ve got too much junk in the trunk, they also didn’t give slimmer girls hollow legs. Hmpf. Just nicer ones. “In my research,” bleats the shock doc, “I discovered the main difference between those who remain slim and those who don’t is behaviour.

“The good news is these ‘slim attitudes’ can be learned, leading to permanent weight loss.”

So where can you get a list of dos and don’ts that’ll make you lose weight without following that tried and tested old fashioned formula, living on fags and cheap cider? In the doc’s book, Thin Secrets (Bubbly Publishing).

I’ve dipped in – without the aid of a cheese straw, thank you very much – and found four rules of thinbalina etiquette.

1 Slim people have slim habits Don’t assume slim people are shaped that way without much effort. Compare their lifestyle and activity level to that of your common or garden lardy a*** and you’ll see all the evidence you’ll need, says Dr Liz.

2 Slim people make their size a priority Did you know that being slim doesn’t just happen, you have to make it happen? Who knew! You should see the work I had to put into being a size 22.

3 Slim people don’t ignore small changes Slimmies, I assume because they can get up out of a chair quicker, take action as soon as they notice a difference in the way their jeans fit.

4 Slim people don’t diet They don’t ban food, eat cereal morning, noon and night, avoid chocolate on a Wednesday at 4.17pm precisely or think that if they diet in January, they can “stock-up” at Christmas.

But it’s hard to change the habits of a lifetime, isn’t it?

I can make excuses about the way my mind works, but I find it so very hard to make the right choices when it comes to feeling less fat in the head.

Do you ever do that thing where ...

2007-08-09T08:44:00.000-07:00

... you imagine you’re interesting enough to be on the telly?

I do it all the time. It started from the earliest age, where I would hold conversations with Noel Edmonds and tell him why I’d brought on a Hammond organ and battered Welsh hat with just the one piece of ribbon on Swap Shop.

From there, a fantasy fast car would drive me to the Tiswas studios and I’d file fake papers with Sally James to prove I was an Over Eight and not an Under Eight, the age I seemed to be forever in those little days of wanting to be big (not in the way you’re thinking).

Perhaps the Phantom Flan Flinger would persuade me to sing a song while being doused with water, baked beans and custard, getting the words out while I did that thing which everyone seemed to do – carry on while making a big show of flinging said flung stuff out of my eyes and blowing the remnants of pink goo out of my mouth (not without having a sneaky taste first, just in case it was blancmange).

If I was on This Is Your Life, Eamonn Andrews would allow animals on for the first time in the show’s history. Sat next to me would be Tudor the dog, Shortie the Shetland Pony and Head Like A Football, my black cat with a head like a, well, football.

I’m not sure if I’ve grown out of this metaphysical sideline of mine, as on the weekend I was watching The Taste of My Life.

By the time it had finished, and Nigel Slater was cooking Griff Rhys Jones something with eels, crabs and other fishy fodder, I’d been filmed stuffing my face with a chicken dinner, making a corned beef roll and doing “frothy coffee” in the microwave.

In case you haven’t seen it, The Taste Of My Life’s premise is essentially a very simple one. Slater gets to talk to a celeb, makes some of their favourite dishes, and by the magic of oil, nuts, refined flour and fancy white plates, he works out what type of person they are and narrates their biography in light of it.

Who knew eels could be so interesting and tell Slater our lad had been to Oxford? I guess kebab and chips may signify my alma mater, Cardiff University (onions, just to remind me to cry again, speaking of my Cambridge rejection letter).

Griff, posh paws that he is, so freakily health minded he hasn’t had any kind of carbohydrate for five years, was banging on about smoked haddock omelettes, shoulder of lamb, sushi, pumpkin soup and crab in the story of his culinary life.

I guess for a foodie-cum- cook like Slater, it made for an interesting menu.

On that basis, I fear that if he came round my house to relive my misshaped past, he’d have a heart attack. Or die of pre-packaged, deep frosted boredom.

What would he make of me in relation to my history of food choices and faves?

There’s nothing fancy in there, no unusual delicacies, no restaurant quality cooking.

My favourite meal is my mother’s chicken Sunday dinner – home-made gravy (no stock cube as I can taste it through doors), Yorkshire puddings, swede and potato mash, Birds Eye peas, chopped up cauliflower, mint sauce (not garden fresh, but the bottled stuff). Very specific.

Then there’s Hiya Love’s lasagne or his concoction of chicken breasts (ALWAYS boneless and skinless) stuffed with smoked bacon (all traces of fat cut off), topped with mozzarella (kind of fancy I guess) done in a red wine and garlic sauce combo.

I love a basic pizza, dipping the crusts in garlic mayonnaise if I’m lucky and nobody’s looking, steak well done (one drip of red and I’m done for) on the barbecue and perhaps a simple chicken salad (see above instructions), freshly baked bread and strawberry jam (without the bits in), followed by school-made chocolate pudding and white custard. Again, god’s in the details of the finish.

That’s it. Not much is there?

I’d like to think that maybe my choices say that I’m just a normal girl who sometimes gets tied up in specifics, someone with traditional tastes who simply knows what she likes.

(Or should that really be likes what she knows? Maybe that’s at the heart of it.)

And if lack of eels, crabs and lamb shank puts me in the dullard corner and makes me the culinary equivalent of watching paint dry, I’m not all that bothered.

Because you always have time for a fried egg and red sauce sandwich (crispy on the one side, bread lightly toasted) before even considering starting to gloss the skirting boards.

I thought I was being so good ...

2007-07-31T02:59:00.000-07:00

... now that I’m a proper cohabiting grown-up for the very first time in my life.

Not only was I moving Significant (thin) Other in from his barn – yes, barn – to my terraced two up/two down in Hengoed AND dropping off a desk at his ex-wife’s (the second cousin to George Bush Snr, you know, her of the Picasso under the bed and size 12 glamour), I also thought I’d watch what I ate while the Big Move got underway. It was all going swimmingly, until it came to dropping off said desk.

There we all were, S(t)O, housemate Hiya Love and me in a vehicle that looked like a giant burger van, the word Jumbo emblazoned on the side just so there wasn’t any mistake, when the light of my life said it was time to pay a visit to Baubles.

I looked, after two days in a van moving furniture and cables and cases and crates, like a sack of the proverbial gone wrong. So I was in no mood to face dainty toes in that state because I knew she’d be all prepared for my little hello.

Baubles had called S(t)O and asked if I’d be going along to deposit the office furniture, which we all know really translates in the language of girl as, “Is SHE coming round? If so, I’m going to have to make sure I’m looking my best.”

It’s a universal standard, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter if you know someone isn’t emotionally involved with a former love any more, you’ve just got to know that you will be talked about in the right way if you bump into them.

Me? Well, I’m always riddled with doubts that I’ll be forever referred to as that “big bird”, the “fat girlfriend”, how about “funny, quite witty I suppose... but awfully plain”. You know what I’m talking about.

So I did what any sweating, dieting, untidy, scruffy, tired, testy girl would do: I sent in Hiya Love.

Armed with a satellite dish on his head, dictaphone and camera ready to beam information back to me and Mam Jones back in the Rassau, I hopped out of the van and walked the two miles to Tesco to sedate myself with a BBQ chicken wrap, full fat Coke and three fags.

(Amazing, isn’t it, how quickly good intentions fade away when you feel out of your comfort zone?)

Twenty minutes later, the burger van pulled up just in time for me to wipe the BBQ sauce off my mouth and spray the smell of fag ash away with eau de freebie from the smellies aisle.

“Don’t ask,” went Hiya Love, a man who normally judges a woman’s worth by the amount of pegs she uses to hang up a tea towel on a rotary line.

“She’s posher than anyone we know, has more proper art on the walls than a gallery, was all glammed up, got CREAM carpets running through the house and there was an actress from Coronation Street having a cup of coffee in the kitchen.

“Thank God you didn’t go in looking like that. You would have had a turn.”

He meant it with love; I took it badly to heart.

So much to heart, in fact, that through my skewed Hannah Filter I took it to mean that I would never be as good, glam, connected and cream carpeted as Baubles because – look away now – I’m fat.

It’s because I judge myself not by how fabulous I am, how clever, witty, warm hearted or loved... but because I always seem to have BBQ sauce on my chops.

And on my fingers. And usually, running down my clothes. Whereas grace seems to drip off everyone else.

There's a term they have in Fat Club ...

2007-07-24T23:35:00.000-07:00

... that signifies the picking of oneself up out of the fridge and trying to find sensible patterns again.

The phrase “back on it”, copyright fat cows everywhere, is used to signify a return to good ways. It’s as if just by uttering these words, weeks of indifference will melt away like lemon drops and you’re back skipping your way along your personal yellow brick road to self fulfilment.

Trouble is, you’ve got to mean it and understand the breadth of the commitment. And I think I’ve lost my guide to its translation, if not direction on how to move forward again.
You must have used it, right?

You must have said you’ve been “off it” – ie dieting – long enough to feel bigger, sadder, rounder.

So much bigger, sadder and rounder that you feel the need to go “back on it”.

By that reasoning, you’ve been “off it”, fallen from grace and possibly face first into a vat of black forest gateau. Following?

I’ve been “off it” for about four weeks now, enough time to make me feel slovenly, out of control and lazy. Oh, and ugly, an inedible curse.

I’ve eaten normally for me, which is abnormal for anyone else.

On Sunday, because I wasn’t thinking about what I WAS doing rather than what I wasn’t, I had five Yorkshire puddings.

I convinced myself that because they hadn’t risen so well – each one just the size of a modest condo – it didn’t really count.

My mother, who has lost a staggering, magnificent and jealousy-inducing four stone plus a bit in just over a year, didn’t comment about my dietary indiscretions (I wasn’t wearing any make-up, my hair was flat and the birthmark under my eye had flared up – signs that something’s up with me, signals she can read without the aid of a map).

But not saying something was almost worse in a way because silence, in her case, isn’t golden. It screams disappointment. Not IN me, but FOR me. The difference, Mam style, is huge.

Me being the defensive, useless lumper that I am, answered her lack of vocalised opinion by saying, in between mouthfuls of paradise dipped into her chicken gravy, “Anyway, I’m back on it tomorrow. I’ve done it before so I can do it again. And I’m TINY on your scales.”

“Back on what? And you know those scales don’t work properly,” came her answer.

“The diet of course. I’ve not really been on it lately but it’s Monday tomorrow and I thought I might as well enjoy my Sunday dinner so I can go back on it feeling refreshed (read stuffed) tomorrow. And what do you mean they don’t work?”

I’d hopped on the scales in the hope that I hadn’t put on any real significant weight since my calorific demise and I was delighted to see I was lighter than I’d been in ages.

But not really convinced after the font of all knowledge’s warning, the day after I went into Boots and was even lighter again. Three stones lighter than when I first started in Fat Club in January in fact.

Confusion must have been written on my face because one of the assistants asked me what was up.

When I explained that I was now officially not a death threat but simply clinically obese (rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? Such a beautiful term...) according to the piece of paper in my hand, she offered to test out the machine again.

So off she went and got another 30p out of the till for me.

On I stepped and yes, there in black and white, was the good news in duplicate.
Confused? You bet.

Despite that, the fact that I was POSSIBLY three stones lighter made me feel like I had diamonds in my hands instead of baby-like dimples.

I was, to put it mildly, elated. And then came the crash.

Over at the coffee shop later that day, I overheard two thinnies talking about their weigh-in at another chemists earlier that week.

It doesn’t matter where it was, only that they’d relied on a fantasy set of scales to fill them with false hope.

Each had come in at – read it and weep girls – 8lb and 10lb lighter on the digital magic counter compared to their real Fat Club weight.

“Never mind,” said the size 12.

“We’ll go back on it tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” said the other. “But best finish off these muffins first.”

Back on it, I thought to myself. The point of my forever return.

HAVE you ever seen a good fat dancer?

2007-07-17T12:34:00.000-07:00

There wasn’t any on Fame! as far as I can remember.

Some may say the character of Doris was a bit of a lumper, but what they mean is that she wasn’t a size 12 and had Curly Sue hair. In other words she wasn’t as nice looking as Coco or that one with the cello and flat hair who couldn’t sing.

So when it came to dance lessons, our Doris would make light of the fact that she couldn’t barrida with the thinnies and instead hop off to the canteen where she’d bounce on a table and belt out something or other about high-fidelity (high, high, high).

Then there was that blond bloke with the sousaphone, played by some nerdy FAT type who was a hated hall monitor.

Did we ever see him dance, in a school that was supposed to make its pupils masters and mistresses of all the art forms?

Did we hell. We only got to see him getting teased in the hallway and tell anyone who’d listen that a sousaphone isn’t a tuba. A fat instrument played by a fat kid who had no sense of humour.

I mean, talk about type casting.

I for one can’t dance. Sure, I can shake my arms around and make like I’m designing bricks or scratching my arm pits (as someone said, making like I’m bathing a rabid cat on the dance floor).

I don’t mind jiggling and wiggling about, but I think it’s a bit unsightly on me to be honest.

Like in most areas of my life, I’m too self-conscious and rely on comedy and quick wit to disguise it.

I move... my belly(s) goes the other way.

I go to the left and step to the right... my arse plays catch-up in the next room.

But I’m fabulous at the cakewalk. You get the picture.

Now I may not be so much a demon on the dance floor as someone who avoids any kind of activity done in public while wiggling, but I don’t think bigger people who have obviously got talent in this department should be stopped from doing it just because they have a lot going on in the chin department.

Which is why I think Arlene Phillips’s treatment of that bloke from Wales who didn’t get through on DanceX on Saturday was so unfair.

The cameras followed this big fella around – sorry, can’t remember his name – not because he was brilliant (he was), funny (not bad) or handsome (he did have something going on).

But because he stood out from all the rest. And why?

No, it wasn’t because he had Wonder Woman on his knickers or thought he was the love child of Michael Jackson and Carmen Miranda.

BECAUSE HE WAS A DANCING FAT PERSON.

And that, according to the show’s makers, singled him out as a “human interest” emotive story. Big wow.

I watched Arlene watch him and pull faces like she was sucking a gone-off lemon, knowing full well that for the type of group she had in mind his “look” wasn’t what she was after.

The poor dab was obviously deluded because he thought his dancing was enough to get him in the final dance off.

“Don’t judge me on this,” he said, making a sweeping motion with his hands over his face.

“Judge me on these,” and plié down to his feet. Yeah, as if the world only judges on talent alone. The thought is enough to put me off my breakfast. Then again...

Anyway, our pal’s card was marked from the outset because acid-tongued Arlene, the woman with a face like a 10lb trout (she’s a bitch, and I’m now in training to follow in her dainty footsteps), said in a recent interview that she’s inflexible about what kind of dancer she wants in her troupe.

Put it this way, she doesn’t want Dawn French in a tutu.

“I’m looking for gorgeous, unusual dancers,” she said.

“I think the most important thing is not only that they can dance but also that they’re physically fit.

“I’m afraid I’m not flexible about size and shape.

“I’m so politically incorrect that the producers have struggled to keep me from shouting out about people’s size.”

So what would she bellow, given the chance?

“Britain, you’re overweight.

“It’s also about lack of strength. I don’t mind if somebody’s big, so long as they’re strong and their muscles are toned. But some of them look like puddings.”

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never met a pudding I don’t like.

Only the skinny ones with no filling or substance.

AS in most areas of my life, I’ve been beaten to the chase.

2007-07-10T12:20:00.000-07:00

I’ve written this book, see – it’s based on these WM columns of mine and to give it its full title it’s Diary of a Diet: A Little Book of Big. It’s out in September and is published by Accent if you’re interested (please God!).

But some other big bird with similar hair – and who is certainly more famous than my alphabet soup status – got there first me too it. And I’m gutted.

So there I was, wasting time on a day off watching Loose Women when the hens brought on Mikyla Dodd, who was on to talk about being big and being on the telly.

She was classed as “the fat girl from Hollyoaks” – also the title of her book – and on she strode in high-heeled baby doll shoes and the kind of fun-filled attitude I can only dream of.

I’ve read her book, and although her story has got loads of similarities to mine, the differences are glaring.

Her: Gorging on fast food and bingeing on alcohol and drugs.

Me: Penchant for cold pizza and Shandy Bass on a hot day.

Her: An abortion aged 13, a sexual assault and the death of her sister from bowel cancer.

Me: I had a nasty Shetland Pony called Shorty who suddenly went to horsy heaven one Sunday. (I later found out he was horse napped by some blokes from the Rhymney AFTER my mother paid them a fiver each to take buckaroo away.)

Her: She’s recently done a naked photo shoot for a magazine.

Me: I’m waiting for the call from the marketing folk at JCB.

Her: 24 stone at her biggest, she’s now 15 stone 6lbs and is trying to get down to 14 stone before her 30th birthday later this year.

Me: I was born 14 stone and my scales don’t register that light these days as I think they’re made by Reinforced Inc and start at not-so-sweet 16 stone.

Her: She played Chloe in Hollyoaks for nearly five years and went on to lose the most weight of any female contestant in Celebrity Fit Club.

Me: I played Nancy in a school production of Oliver! and my “celebrity” isn’t enough to get me a free gym membership.

Her: Mikyla’s mother would say that other kids were staring at her because she was beautiful; her father took a crueller stance, berating her for being overweight.

Me: The sun set in my eyes. While dark, Dad removed the remnants of a family-sized pack of Salt ‘n’ Shake from my hands as I slept.
It’s a dark read, Mikyla’s book, often tragic and desperate.
But it’s also inspirational I guess, because she does get a grip on her relationship with food.

I’m still writing this diet column, so I guess you’ve got to assume I still haven’t won that fight. And that’s what my book is about – the very ordinary act of living it large when it makes you feel kind of small for not being more than you feel you should be.

Remember the cabbage soup diet? The Atkins? The sucking a teaspoon of custard through a straw plan? Abject misery? You name it, the book’s about the diets I’ve loved to hate and not lost anything on.

It also covers my recent journey back to Fat Club, and the ups and plenty of downs of getting where I am today – dropping from a size 24 to a 22 (big bloody wow) since January and shedding a measly two stone to get there (rubbish rate and a huge amount for such a little return).

It’s the story about my struggle to commit to get fit, stick to a sensible eating plan or think, once and for all, bugger it, I’m simply fabulous just the way I am today.

Diary of a Diet, the tome that is, is an alternative diet book – so alternative in fact it won’t tell you what not to eat and I’ve broken it up into chapters that you can metaphorically nibble on in between pork-pie love-ins.

In fact I’m thinking of giving away pasties with promotional copies, but I’m fearful of having a house full and not enough stamps to lick to keep me busy.

It’s just a witty (well, I hope so at least), heart felt (certainly) and often sad (cow) study on living life in the fat – oops, sorry! – fast lane to self-acceptance.

It’s a book about me that just happens to have been written for women, whatever their shape or size, who’ve ever felt pressure to weigh out their self-esteem with their chips.

So that’s one thing the fat girl from Hollyoaks and I have in common at the very least.

WHAT am I going to wear?

2007-06-26T12:36:00.000-07:00

This isn’t just any old party, you know.

It’s being organised by Significant (Thin) Other’s ex-wife (the rich American one, not the Blackpool-based one who’s the mother of his children – this lot make a Dynasty storyline look like a chapel-based coffee morning).

I’ve never met her before, just lived in the shadow of her wealth, distant relation status to the American President (second cousins or something), stories of Tiffany twiddle sticks and a “small, very small” Picasso gathering dust under the bed, her BLONDE HAIR, SIZE 34F CHEST and SIZE 12 FRAME.

Top heavy she may be, but brilliant, beautiful, connected and – here’s the clincher – considerate she most definitely is. Don’t it just make you sick?

So I’m eating soup. No Tiger rolls from Tesco to dip in. In readiness. Scoffing pineapple chunks and grapes by the bucket load too. To lose a stone. Just the one. Just in case I need less of me to feel more.

I’m letting my roots go a bit manky so I can have a new dye job the week before, practising with high hells (sic) in the evenings, thinking nice thoughts to get me in the mood so that I’m not Bad Hannah that day.

You know, the day OF THE MEETING.

Anyway, how civilised is this? Not only do Wife Number 2 and my S(T)O get on really well – she even asks about me for God’s sake – she’s organising his goodbye party before he moves in with me.

No, not his good riddance party – they’re far too grown-up for all that.

She’s organising a do to say farewell to her former love – my current one... keeping up? – and inviting all his friends over to say tata to him and (gulp) hiya to me.

So not only do I have to make merry with the American with the boobs and things, I also have to play sociable with a gang of strangers.

So I’ll repeat again – WHAT THE HELL AM I GOING TO WEAR?

Which brings me neatly to the soup and pineapple plan.

But my reasoning – well, Gillian McKeith’s actually, otherwise known as the diminutive diet dictator – is that I could lose a total of three stone by the time I have to go to play Is She Worth Leaving Your Home For? with the Cheshire set.

So I’m watching an advance copy of McKeith’s new Channel 4 show, Three Fat Brides, One Thin Dress (which is on tonight, incidentally).

In each episode Smug the Scot meets three “bulging brides-to-be” (her term, not mine) in desperate need of her help. They’ve got just eight weeks to transform their appearance and well-being, with the prize of the wedding dress of her dreams for the bride who has the greatest success.

But it’s not just about weight loss: the brides must pledge to stick to McKeith’s vows, and the winner will love her foods, honour her regime and obey her rules to her wedding day and beyond.

Anyway, the girls lost around two stones each just by munching on pulses and grains with names I can’t spell let alone pronounce.

So I got to thinking, if they can do it, why can’t I?

Then I tried lentils. Then I had a nut. Then I came to my senses.

Then I heard of another friend who’s had gastric bypass surgery who’s only allowed to have a tea-plate sized amount of food a day.

It’s a liquid diet and she’s lost so much weight in a month, another friend wondered if she’d been dieting or simply loosened her necklace.

It was – and roll around with me in the words every dieter wants to hear, just for a minute – hanging off her. Bliss. I’m following her lead and going on a soft food diet (notice how swiftly I moved from a liquid diet to one with the word food in it?).

I don’t know how long I’ll stick it out, but I’ve got a blonde in my mind sat under a wonderful work of art, regaling good friends with tales of happy days she and my man spent together.

S(T)O says I’m mad – but also beautiful and brilliant and other Esperanto I don’t understand.

I just about picked out, “They’ll all adore you like I do and want to be around you.” But as I said to him, I have to at least FEEL I look good while I’m false smiling and trying to look someone in the eyes and not the chest.

If that isn’t inspiration enough, I don’t know what is.

Not for a second did I think ...

2007-06-19T12:41:00.000-07:00

TWO bits of good news this week. Greedy bugger, eh? There’s also some bad vibes floating around, but they are from my fellow Fat Club members who put weight on last week.

BUT I LOST FOUR POUNDS!

As you know, until the end of last week it’d been boiling hot.

I’m not sure if that’s supposed to affect people’s weight – I’d always been told that you ate less in the summer (although I’ve not noticed a slowing down in my chewing abilities).

But when the girls in front of me in the FC queue ALL failed to lose anything, they all had the same one-size-fits-all- lardy-arses explanation: “Must be the weather.” (Yep, that or the fact they ate their body weight in barbecue sauce because they convinced themselves that al fresco dining is fat free).

One by one they’d stand on the scales while the evil-tongued thinnie in bold gold jewellery in charge of writing down the damage in their chubby check book would break the news that they’d failed in the weigh game.

And they’d all, bar none, get this look on their face; not a look of idle acceptance that they’d obviously sinned and were now paying the price. But one of total disbelief – you know, like the one you have when you’re told eating 10 fat-free pizzas is okay as long as you don’t swallow.

Too good to be true? Whenever you see that promise, it usually is.

Girl number one: “I’ve put on? There must be some mistake. I only had three pints of lager this weekend. It must be the weather.”

Bold Gold Weigher: “Yes, it must be the weather. (And I’m surprised the scales don’t say ‘sorry we don’t do livestock’ when you step on it). Next!”

Girl number two: “That can’t be right. Two pounds on? I’ve been really good all week and only been eating barbecue food. Do you think it’s the weather?”

Bold Gold Weigher: “That’ll be it. (And I bet that when you go to an all-you-can-eat barbecue, they have to install speed bumps). Next!”

Girl number three: “Here’s hoping for a loss... sorry? What did you say? That can’t be right, love. I’ve been living on fruit! Scones, bara brith, strawberry gateau. All low fat, mind. It’s this bloody weather – it makes you want to eat more.”

Bold Gold Weigher: “Bound to be the weather. (You may be 36-24-36, but that’s the measurement for your forearm, neck, and thigh.) Next!”

Me: “Four pounds off? That can’t be right. Must be this heat.”

But a four pound loss it was, bringing a genuine smile to the face of the queen of mean.
And I’m not talking about me there. For weeks now, I’ve felt stuck in a rut, failing to notice the weight that I had lost. I was not only losing weight, but context. I simply felt that I looked the same and that I needed a really big push to get me over the stumbling block, to haul my big fat *** over the two stone barrier and into that mystical land of Three.

What I needed was something palpable to make me feel better about myself.

Anyway, I found it in a shopping trip with my mother. Armed with a 40% press discount card for Outfit in Merthyr, we arrived ostensibly to look at the small Evans section.
But Mam Jones, ever the optimist, said I should look at some of the – gulp – size 20s from other sections.

... I could fit into a size 20 or even a 22 – I can’t remember the last time I was that small or went into a “normal” shop for anything other than accessories.

But you would not – WOULD NOT – believe my joy when I left with two size 22 tops from Evans (result!) and A SIZE 20 BLOUSE FROM WALLIS. Wallis!

It’s white, it’s low cut, it’s GOT ROOM AROUND THE BELLY AREA!

But do you want to know the best news of all? I didn’t celebrate my massive loss and gain with two corned beef rolls and a packet of crisps.

I’m thinking it must have something to do with the weather...

"Oh, that looks healthy ..."

2007-03-13T08:16:00.000-07:00

... she said, as I was munching on yoghurts.

"Don't know if it is," I answered in between mouthfuls (I had to be quick as I had two open and I didn't want any of them to go off, now, did I?).

"I was told in Fat School there weren't any Syns in them. So I have, on average, about 10,765 a day now. Give or take."

"I guess it's the calcium in them, the Omega this and thats which is good for you then," my slim friend offered.

"Umm... well... haven't got a clue what's in 'em. I don't ask questions after hearing the words 'you can eat as many of these as you like'."

She came back with, "I'm trying to be good too. I've started to alternate a packet of cheesy biscuits with carrot sticks."

At this point, not ever having tasted a carrot but certainly having played that game of stuffing a load of cheesy biscuits into my mouth at the same time to see if I could talk with a dry gob, I wondered, for the umpteenth time, why really slim, lovely looking girls with bodies to die for and hair made for a Timotei advert, are so strict with themselves.

"Why are you being good?" I go, confusion written all over my face, now in a Lasting Satisfaction (please!) strawberry yoghurt.

"Have you seen your figure? If I had a body like yours and wasn't prone to putting on weight, I'd be stuffing for Wales all the time."

"Because... er... well... I suppose it's because I'm trying to be healthy."

"Healthy? No bugger can see your innards!" was my skewed logical argument back in her beautiful face. Funny, isn't it, how differently people see the weight thing. I've now lost one and a half stones (oi, you in the back – that's 21lb!) and I'm still fat in the head.

Whenever people ask me why I want to lose weight and why I'm on yet another diet, I always say it's because I want to live a more healthier lifestyle. My body, I tell them, is a temple (albeit one already semi-condemned with a few leaks in the roof). I don't give people the real reasons which can basically be reduced, just like a good bolognese sauce, to a few home truths, tossed in a not-so-light light Hannah-style dressing. And that's because I feel ugly, I hate not being able to buy stuff on the high street, and I want to see my feet.

This is my unholy triumvirate, otherwise known as the Three Little Pigs of Me.

When you say you're on a diet, that you want to lose weight for whatever reason, I'm sure that most women think I'm doing it to reach an absurd goal weight, some space age size.

Here's a newsflash – I DON'T WANT TO BE A SIZE 12. I can't imagine it and neither do I really fancy it if I'm honest. Okay, so I may be greedy when it comes to portions, but I'm not a glutton for delusion. I've said it before and I'll say it again, a size 16 to 18 would suit me fine.

This is what's attractive to me.

I'd even "settle" – reluctantly using that word because I don't want it to sound like I'm shortchanging myself – for a comfortable 20. Then I could shop where I wanted, I think I'd feel more attractive and I'm sure I'd be able to see my feet after all these years. I don't want to be the kind of slim where I'd be capable of touching my toes – as far as I'm concerned, if god had wanted me to do that, She would have put them on my knees instead of nobbles. Or think of carrots as a treat.

Words of wisdom:
"Self delusion is pulling in your stomach when you step on the scales" - Paul Sweeney