Dear body

Dear body,

I don’t like you. I never have and I never will. You’ve hurt me, humiliated me. You’ve let people call me Fatty. You’ve let them laugh at me.

At school, you made sure all the best boys went to skinny girls who wore short skirts and didn’t have a bum with the capacity to block out the sun.

You didn’t even have the decency to give me a carefree childhood because you made me crave Jelly Tots and Mars Bars and jammy doughnuts. You taught me my first lesson: learn to be laughed at.

Because of you I had to wear elasticated waists when all the other girls were wearing skinny jeans and hot pants. You made me want to banish the words “stretch” and “polyester” from the English language because for years, my size meant the only clothes I could wear were a combination of these two hideous elements.

You made sure I never knew what it was like to feel pretty or feminine. And because of you, the first boy who ever kissed me (at a school dance when I was 15) only did it for a bet.

You’ve made sure that for most of my adult life I’ve felt second-rate.

I’ve hit you with everything - Weight Watchers, Slimming World, The Boiled Egg And Grapefruit Diet, The Cabbage Soup Diet. I’ve even let myself be humiliated on a national TV show - Celebrity Fit Club (nicknamed Fat Club) - in a bid to shame me into losing weight. Hell’s teeth, I had to do press-ups in front of the nation because of you.

Two years ago I thought I’d beaten you once and for all. I enlisted the help of LighterLife, a 600-calorie-a-day diet that involved eating what a friend called “pig dust” (powdered drinks and faux chocolate bars). And, yes, for a while I actually felt like a winner.

For the first time in my life I felt good about myself. I was 4st lighter and a size 10. I could wear skinny jeans, tight little dresses and thigh-length boots.

My arms no longer looked like legs of lamb and my thighs lost the capacity to create sparks when my legs rubbed together. And, God, did I feel sexy.

But then, that’s the thing about you, Body - you don’t want me to be happy. And it didn’t take long before you reminded me about all the things I’d been missing: the Krispy Kreme doughnuts, the wine...

So now I’m a size 16, the thigh-high boots are at the back of the wardrobe, the miniskirts are being bundled up for the charity shop and I’ve already been in the loft to hunt out those gargantuan trousers I swore I’d never need again.

So don’t blame me for hating you, Body. You brought it all on yourself.

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