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

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?

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,”

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.

.. 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:

... “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 ...

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?

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.