As I was growing up, it was made clear that the fat me wasn't welcome, that a thin person was expected and awaited, and impatiently so.

My mother, father, stepmother and surrogate mother have all died of cancer; my best friend has got terminal cancer and at least five of my other friends have had cancer but survived it.

Despotism isn't nearly as bad as it's cracked up to be.

The real me now may not be thin but she's got the cake and, if she likes, can eat it too.

I'm the co-chair of the PTA at my kids' school, Ashmount Primary, in north Islington, London.

I would like it to be a legal requirement for all businesses to be linked to a charity.

Sticking to a diet required me to have a permanently low self-esteem. But happily, I developed other skills beyond a fluctuating weight, eventually building up a different source of self-worth.