I’ve been crying today.

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 ...

... 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 ...

... 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 ...

... 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 ...

... 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?

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.

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.