I’ve got two stone to lose… you can help!

I’ve tried them all. Atkins, 5:2, Fast800 — you name it, I’ve tried that diet. I probably enjoyed Atkins the most, since I was allowed cheese. I could live on cheese alone. Seriously, if you told me that for the rest of my life I could only ever eat cheese I’d think you were performing a mitzvah. But the problem, of course, is that I couldn’t actually live just on cheese.

And so in classic fashion my weight has yo-yoed over the past few decades. I’ve never been what you might call trim, but I’ve been just about OK. And then it’s gone on again. (Who am I kidding here? It didn’t go on of its own accord. I put it on.)

But challenging as I’ve always found it to stop ballooning, lockdown has been of an altogether different order of magnitude. Thanks to my leukaemia, I had to shield from the start, and when ‘Freedom Day’ happened last July it was another prison sentence for those of us for whom the vaccine doesn’t work. So for most of the past two years I have been confined to my flat, other than some walks for my sanity.

Confined, that is, with my fridge and my cupboard. With food. And alone — without other people who ‘socialise’ the speed and quantity one eats. Add to that some steroids I have to take to alleviate the side effects of my treatment, and my weight has…well, I have put on two stone.

Living alone in a pandemic isn’t great, and there have been periods when my attitude to my weight has been — let’s just say I stopped caring.

But even at the worst times I’ve always had that voice at the back of my head pointing out I have two children and I don’t want to have a heart attack. But it needed something to jolt me into action, and that something was when I realised it was a struggle to put on my socks. This was not good.

That’s why at the end of last year I decided it had to be done. Not another of those gimmick diets but something sensible and steady. Having heard good things about Weight Watchers I signed up and started.

I noticed James Corden had joined too (and lost two stone) and I was slightly concerned that I’d look like I was celebrity inspired. I wasn’t. But I’m sticking with it.

Two weeks in, I have lost six pounds, and found it surprisingly easy — not least because I am allowed to nosh on fruit. But I know how difficult it is to stick at it, which is why I am writing this. Reader: you are my secret weapon. I need the threat of humiliation if I stop. So please do stand over me. And please judge me.