I thought I needed a “life bitch”

... 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 ..

... 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.

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 ...

... 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 ....

... 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 ...

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

I doubt that anyone ...

... 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.