If one's honest about it, spending time in a car with children is pretty ghastly.

Society prizes a girl for being thin more than anything else she might bring to the table.

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.

Statistically, if you have ever dieted you are extremely likely not only to regain any weight you lose, but to go on to gain even more. Dieting makes you fat.

If no one saw - it didn't count. It's only when you eat in front of strangers or people that make you feel guilty that food is really fattening.

Success, in whatever form it takes, is a tricky thing - once you've achieved your goal, then what? Where do you aim?

If, however, you have richer pursuits in mind and know that no woman should be judged by how she looks - that everything she brings to the party is more important than the size of her arse - then refuse to be sucked into the never ending whirligig of self-doubting, self-hating madness that is stop-start dieting and crazy new exercise regimes.