Today

What a spendid week! I've just returned from a "5 day slimaway" break at my favourite health hydro the lorrens in Babbacombe.

I've been going with the girls for some years now. It's a family run place for ladies only and the package manages to fit in 35 treatments of different types to help kick start your slimming programme.

I've been exercised, pummelled, massaged, electrified, vacuumed and fed extremely carefully calorie-counted meals. I've sauna-ed, jacuzzi-ed, steamed, baked, scrubbed, showered, exfoliated. I even did some running and walking.

By so doing I managed to lose 6 1/2 lbs and 15 1/2 inches.

Result!

In My Day

I was a fattish child from the start, weighing in at 10lbs. I didn't much like exercise, and never made the connection between eating and weight gain. I was permitted to eat crisp sandwiches, even sugar sandwiches (white bread, butter, white caster sugar). There were no particular restrictions on the consumption of biscuits or bread.

I don't know that I was a very greedy child, but no-one then seemed to talk about diet. I ate my school dinner every day, including pudding (blancmange & jelly or chocolate sponge with chocolate custard featured) as well as a full cooked evening meal.

If you were fat, people veered between sympathy and sarcasm, but no-body suggested that you would be better off without sugar sandwiches or second helpings.

It wasn't till I was about 17 that I began to think about these things. I was put on a diet by my doctor (it would make amusing reading today) but thought I would help things along by lunching on liquorice sticks and drinking a lot of black coffee. It seemed a rather arty sort of thing to do!

I did lose some weight, but have spent the rest of my life trying to be very careful. Sometimes things go awry, such as when I somehow hit 14 1/2 stone in 2001.

The trouble is I have this fantasy, that if I'm very careful for a whole day, I will wake up the next morning with all the weight dropped off.

Now, where's that glass of wine?