Something personal, to get it off my chest.

Being fat is a lot like self harming. I’ve never self harmed in the traditional sense, but I know people who have and I recognise the feelings of desperate self loathing they speak of. You buy crap food knowing full well that you don’t need it, and that it’ll do you no good; you even tell yourself that as you’re stuffing it into your mouth. But you still do it.

I’ve been fat for most of my life, so I’ve never really known any different. I lost quite a lot of weight when I was 15, due almost entirely to my Mum putting me on a strict diet and my not having any money of my own with which to snack outside of the house. Looking back at pictures of me from then I can’t believe how skinny I am compared to how I see myself, but even then I didn’t feel skinny.

So I’ve been fat for almost all of my life. Because of this, I believe that the only way I can ever be truly happy is to be “normal” on the BMI chart.

But I can’t be, and I don’t really know why.

I mean, I know *why*. It’s because, when I worked for Dominoes, I’d spend the evening snacking on the mis-made pizzas that got put out the back, then I’d buy a kebab after my shift to eat while sat in a quiet lay-by looking across Southampton water. That would be time to myself, time when no one would judge me, or talk to me. I could sit there, eating kebab, knowing that I shouldn’t be, hating myself for doing it, but listening to Radio 4 and feeling calm.

It’s also because I buy fast food when I’m out and about - not because I’m hungry, but because I want to taste it. I have lunch in my bag - I know I have, because I went to the trouble of making it - but I disregard it in favour of a Quarter Pounder, Bacon Double Cheese or Fillet Tower. Then I eat my lunch as well.

In many ways, I’m a junkie. There are few differences between me and someone who’s hooked on heroin. I know I can stop, but I’ll just have this burger, or this pie, or this large sausage and chips. But this is the last one. Tomorrow I’ll stop. Tomorrow I’ll be sensible. But today it’s too late, so I may as well have a pea fritter as well. And a can of Coke. It’ll be Diet Coke tomorrow.

But tomorrow never comes, because that craving, that urge is always there. That voice in my head that tells me it’s ok to buy a bag of Cadbury’s Buttons because they’re only a pound.

I can’t remember the last time I was truly hungry.

People who are hooked on heroin, however, can get help for their addiction. They can, if they feel strong enough, visit their GP and get put on the right path to a clean life. People who self harm can be offered counseling services - albeit on a limited scale. Fat people, at a push, can be offered 6 weeks of Slimming World for free, after which they have to start paying £5 a week. That’s not much, I’ll grant, but it’s all the money in the world if you have none.

And no, passing on a McDonald’s in order to pay for that week’s Slimming World session is not a logical conclusion, because gluttony on this scale is not a logical obsession. In the same way that the destitute heroin addict will somehow afford his next fix, an obese person will find a way to afford crappy food.

The wonderful Mitch Benn has just finished touring a show called ‘Reduced Circumstances’, based on his losing twelve stone. It’s a brilliant, funny, heart wrenching show, and if he releases it on CD, then I thoroughly recommend buying it. In it, he makes the point that a drug addict, or alcoholic is addicted to something that he can then avoid. It won’t be easy, but it is possible to avoid drinking alcohol for the rest of your life. One must eat though. We’re addicted to a substance that we have absolutely no chance of avoiding.

I once went to my GP and asked what they could offer me in order to help. I was desperate for someone to help me, and not just lay the blame for my various health problems at the door of my obesity. I was offered a cut-price membership to my local council gym. For the princely sum of something like £2 a session, I could attend as often as I liked. Yes, that could have potentially helped the physical problems I had, but it would have done nothing for my mental wellbeing. In fact, what actually ends up happening is that you go four or five times, then can’t muster up the energy, so you eat to make yourself feel better, and so on, and so on…

Two years ago I lost three stone. I did it through a combination of the Slimming World plan and cycling to a job I had. I’d never felt better and more smug than I did then. I’d cracked it, I knew how to lose the weight! I put it all back on again that Christmas, and have steadily grown bigger ever since.

But it doesn’t matter, because being overweight is a personal choice, isn’t it? I get to decide what goes in my mouth, so it’s my fault that I’m morbidly obese. This is what I hear. I hear that I can decide to change, and if I really wanted to, I would.

Is that true? I don’t think it is.

I want a counselor to help me to understand the route causes of my relationship with food, but without being able to afford one, I will have to go it alone. In the meantime I will be laughed at by everyone, because I’m the last demographic that it’s still ok to bully.

I’ll make myself feel better with a bar of chocolate and a can of Coke.