London - Most women know about serial dieting - that strange cycle of hopping madly from diet to diet, with brief periods in between where all the weight inevitably piles back on.
For the serial dieter, any old weight loss programme will do, whether it’s eating only grapefruit for weeks on end, or just meat, or nothing but eggs.
And all of us serial dieters have one thing in common. We can all lose the weight. It’s keeping it off that’s the problem. So when the pounds creep on again, we turn to another diet. And then another. Until diets become a way of life.
Now, research confirms what I have long suspected - that it’s all utterly pointless, because the vast majority of dieters will soon return to their former size.
In fact, fewer than ten percent of the 12 million Britons who go on a diet each year succeed in losing significant amounts of weight, and most of those who do put it all back on within a year. I know this is true. It has happened to me more times than I can count.
The reason, I believe, is that being overweight is as much an emotional problem as a physical one. And only by finding that emotional cause and confronting it can we keep the weight off for good.
My own story is familiar enough. I was a skinny child who piled weight on at puberty. Everyone said it was just puppy fat and would vanish as I got older. It never did.
I was a fat teenager and a fat adult, and I hated it. I became a full-time yo-yo dieter, caught in a never-ending cycle of despair.
Despite what Dawn French used to say about being big and beautiful, no one enjoys being fat.
Fat people are seen as lazy and greedy, a legitimate target for those who aren’t. Some fight back by saying: “This is me, I’m comfortable with myself as I am - take me or leave me.”
Well I have been there, done that, and I know how fat people really feel. Out-of-control, helpless, stupid and weak. Oh, and ugly. However jolly they may appear, fat people are crippled by self-hate and avoid mirrors like the plague.
Fat people just want to pass as ordinary, to be the same as everyone else, to wear what other people wear in the same sizes. But all that happens is that serial dieters end up with wardrobes of clothes they once fitted into for a brief spell and can’t bear to throw away, but know in their hearts they will never fit into again.
It’s too simplistic to say fat people are greedy and have to eat everything they see. I have always known there had to be reasons why I overate; the difficulty was in finding them.
I am an intelligent human being; I knew what I was doing. The trouble was I couldn’t stop doing it - or, at least, not for long.
I don’t drink, have never smoked, and am disciplined and smart enough to write books. So why did I find it impossible to control how and what I ate?
I read all the research there was to read about why I was the way I was. I learned that emotional problems were the most common reasons for weight gain - so I took a conscious decision to look back and examine when my battle with my size began.
It wasn’t difficult, because the memory was ingrained in my soul. I could very plainly see where and when it started.
For me, like so many big women, puberty had coincided with my sudden weight gain. But I realised that had always been an excuse, rather than a reason, and that I had overlooked deeper issues.
My life around that time disintegrated after a sudden death that fragmented our entire extended family. My mother retired from the world, turning me into a child carer. Worse still, I had to cope with an alcoholic father who spent every penny on booze, so I could never be sure there would be food on the table.
Thinking back, I remembered that feeling of lacking control - a feeling that stayed with me over the years about my over-eating. If there was food there I had to eat it. I had to have future meals planned out in my head in a bid to feel secure in a very insecure family.
And then there was my much older brother, who harangued me day and night about my many defects. I was stupid and ugly; that was the main thrust of his comments. And since I was a child while he was an adult, I had no defence.
With everything else that was going on, his spiteful input left me with no self-esteem, and so I ate to feel better. The more I ate, the fatter I got, and the more ferocious his verbal attacks became.
From there I was on a spiral of self-loathing that could well have lasted for the rest of my life.
In adulthood, I had almost resigned myself to the fact that the skinny kid I once was - and still felt inside - had been permanently replaced by the fat woman who could not bear to look at her own reflection.
But once I started to realise that my dysfunctional teenage years could be the root cause of my weight gain, I could see it was part of the jigsaw of my fat life that I hadn’t even considered before.
I’m no different from anyone else struggling with a weight problem out there. We all have our triggers, our family tragedies and experiences, and we all have our stories.
But what is absolutely true is that obesity is not a physical problem - it’s an emotional one.
That’s why my serial dieting never worked. Each extreme eating plan helped me take the weight off, but the emotional reasons causing my over-eating remained unresolved, so the pounds just crept back on again.
Once I started thinking about it deeply, I realised that my brother’s constant criticism had been the last straw.
I had already taken the first step years ago by cutting all ties with my brother. Now he had gone and so had the reasons I had for over-eating. All that was left was a habit I had to break.
So, I thought, was I still going to let his earlier treatment of me dictate the way I ate, the way I abused myself? He wasn’t going to win, I decided - I was better than that.
So now, quietly and calmly, my eating habits have changed completely. I no longer eat things that pile on weight, nor do I over-eat. There’s no plan and no diet, but my attitude to food is different. I realise now it’s just fuel, not a substitute for love.
There have been no thunderbolts or lightning flashes. But for the first time in my life I feel in control, and I feel physically better than I have in years.
The skinny kid is back in town. - Daily Mail