Summer Loving.

I’ve just come back from my holidays with the zumba girls, and we have spent the last week sunning ourselves in Turkey complete with plenty of rest and relaxation and the odd cheeky cocktail or six.

On a girly holiday in 2009, I spent the whole time in my baggy t-shirt and linens, cursing the fact that I would look as sun-kissed as a polar bear and quietly envying my friends their string bikinis and comparatively light luggage (seriously. My Fat Girl cover-ups weighed a ton. Irony was NOT lost one me). I watched, sad, as they casually lifted their tops over their heads and scooched down onto their sunbeds, glistening and lithe. I slopped on the factor thirty to my very few exposed bits, and sat under the umbrella. Slooooowly roasting. I would read my holiday book of choice at an elevated angle so that my bingo wings wouldn’t smoosh against my sides. I convinced myself that my frumpy one-pieces were cute and retro in a Marilyn classy sort of way, but in reality they just barely contained the flab.

Summers were a nightmare. Chub rub; feeling hot all the time due to not wanting to flash the flab; spaghetti straps digging into pudgy shoulders; people just plain taking the mick as they exposed their abs. I mean COME ON. Not only do I feel inferior but YOU’RE OBVIOUSLY A MUCH LOWER TEMPERATURE THAN ME. Eff you, I’m having a Magnum (read: three Magnums).

This summer, I spent most of my days in a string bikini. I would throw on a chiffon maxi dress for when I wanted to go and get the girls a drink from the beach bar. You could see my stomach through it and everything. I would go to the hotel gym every morning and sweat myself inside out before heading for breakfast by the sea.

I used to shy away from holiday photos. Camera flashes would bounce off my fishbelly-coloured skin and when I’d get the slightest hint of a tan, the creases in my fat would stay white. Nothing like having a summertime necklace. I’d make sure they were only headshots; the coy over-the-shoulder-pose and nothing else.

Last week, a member of hotel staff took photos of me and my friends (we agreed to it after a few wines, not going to lie – and it wasn’t casting couchy in the slightest, I promise). And I stood there proudly in my halterneck dress, arms out and everything, and bloody beamed.

It was two tanned fingers to the summer miseries. It was covering myself in sweat at the gym to make sure I wasn’t covered in clothes at the beach. It was my arms looking bigger because I’d been lifting weights that morning.

I love summer these days. Shame I’m a Brit, as it lasts all of five minutes…