Confessions of a yo-yo dieter

My name is Nadia Jaynes and I’m a yo-yo dieter. It sounds ridiculous, but that first sentence sticks in the throat every bit as much as an AA member’s confessional. The life of a yo-yo dieter is a constant cycle of self induced starvation and unreserved binge eating.

If we plan a get together with friends, it’s luck of the draw whether it’s Vanessa Hudgens or Vanessa Feltz that he has on his arm. The only thing guaranteed is that either way I’ll be moaning about feeling fat.

I don’t need a lecture on healthy eating, you really don’t need to tell me that all I need to do to maintain a healthy weight is eat three meals a day – I know this. I know the science behind it. I’m also fully aware I probably have brittle bones and heart disease to look forward to in later life and yet somehow, the constant desire to be 8 stone 2 will always overrule any common sense I have.

The same obsessive mind that convinces me to not allow anything other than cabbage soup to pass my lips for three faint-inducing weeks at a time, can also entice me to devour more food in one sitting than Gillian McKeith laid out on Michelle McManus’s first You Are What You Eat assessment.

I’ve tried every diet in the book. If I could recoup all the money that I’ve spent on various diet classes, exercise videos, detox packs, hypnosis tapes and faddy exercise gadgets, I could probably afford the liposuction I so desperately crave. But it’s always about the quick-fix for the yo-yo dieter. I’m unable to focus on anything long term. I want results and I want them now. If I start a diet on Monday I’ll be weighing myself by Wednesday and if I haven’t lost at least a pound I’ll admit defeat and pig out on crisps and Haribo until the following Monday when the diet starts again. It’s like ground-hog day with much emphasis on the hog.

The clothes in my wardrobe range from a size eight (bloody optimistic) to a size 14 and I am unable to throw any of them away given that my weight can and will fluctuate by a stone and a half from one month to another. Alright, I admit I haven’t reached for my size eights for at least five years, but a girl needs inspiration. My lovely mother in-law-to-be regularly hunts out bargains for me in the sales. She’ll find something “Nadia style” as she calls it, and the phone conversation usually continues thus: “Hi, just in town seen a fab dress - what size are you at the moment?” “Oh Jen I’m pushing a 14 now”, “Hmm well they’ve only got it in a ten – I’ll get it anyway, it’ll fit you at some point”.

No matter how much weight I lose or gain, I will eventually settle around a size 14 and yet I am completely, utterly unable to accept that this is just my size. I would rather swan dive off the wardrobe every morning to shoehorn myself into a size 12 than reach for the next size up.

At various points in the year I attempt to get into my favourite jeans which surprise-surprise also happen to be the teeniest ones I own, occasionally I get the dreaded muffin top, but more often than not the result is more akin to a major explosion in a dough factory – there’s probably more of me spilling over them than into them.

My predicament is definitely not helped by the fact I am betrothed to a man who is insane enough to actually enjoy exercise. He’s been genetically blessed with a great physique but in an equally cruel twist of fate, the maniac thinks a two hour jujitsu class is the perfect way to unwind on a Friday night. If he gets stressed he goes for a jog, if I get stressed I also like to jog – straight to the biscuit tin – pausing only to fill my wine glass en route. The poor bugger doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going. If we plan a get together with friends, it’s luck of the draw whether it’s Vanessa Hudgens or Vanessa Feltz that he has on his arm. The only thing guaranteed is that either way I’ll be moaning about feeling fat.

And that’s the worst thing about it. Am I happier when I’m thin? Most definitely not, dieting makes me miserable and no matter how thin I get I will always wish I was slimmer, more toned, had longer eyelashes, straighter teeth, the list goes on. The goals I set myself will always be unachievable and un-maintainable. I regularly lose a stone in a month in anticipation of a social event then in an attack of nerves a week before the ‘do’ scoff my own body weight in ‘crap’ and put nine pound of blubber back on. It’s quite a talent.

As we go to press I’m a size 14 (or a 12 in Marks and Sparks which definitely counts), I’m on day two of my sixteenth diet this year and the eternal optimist in me is still convinced this might just be the one to change my eating habits forever. The realist in me knows it’s more likely to change my eating habits until Thursday.

But I’ll never stop striving for those size six hot-pants and every time the display on the scales is unfavourable – I’ll repeat the yo-yo dieter’s mantra, “what goes up...”