Annual panic as the hunt begins again for my ‘summer body’

WHAT was your first thought when the sun came out?

Hurray! The end of a cruel winter! No more thermals! Goodbye to snow-ins!

Living up some hills just outside of Dundee, I should have thought all of the above — not least because I was trapped by an eight-foot snow drift for days.

But my first thought was selfconsumed. I mentioned it last week — the dread of getting your legs out at the first glimmer of sun.

But it goes deeper than that. It’s an annual panic that ensues over where to find that elusive “summer body”.

They talk of it in magazines, daytime chat shows and newspapers and yet my own “summer body” remains buried under a soft, white layer of flesh.

The revelation for me this year is listening to other women and I am convinced that more than 90% of us feel the same.

I don’t want to leave the men out — perhaps you have the same insecurities, but just don’t verbalise it all day every day.

“Och you’re fine,” pals will say if I moan. But (thank goodness) they only see me in clothes and well, also thank goodness for body-control tights, “panty girdles” (I think this is a Dundee-ism for the posher “Spanx” pants) and loosefitting tops.

Over four years of a near-constant state of pregnancy, I’ve put on 10 stones. People say this can’t possibly be true but it is — not all at once, but four stones with my Monty, three stones with Chester, then another three with Guthrie.

Each time, most of the weight may have come off — but not all, and the lasting result? Let’s put it this way: things will never be the same.

We all know how to do it — eat less, move more, no chocolate. And yet, my daily routine is eating well and keeping those calories down — then turning into a werewolf when the sun goes down and inhaling a family-sized bar of Cadbury’s Wholenut. For starters.

When I’ve confessed to this routine to family members or pals, they laugh heartily in recognition.

You’re right. Enough of the self-pity. Let’s talk solutions. The solution is most certainly not fad diets.

The Atkins with its no carb mantra gives bad breath and is bad for the heart; the cabbage soup diet is antisocial on many fronts and like the worst of any “craze” diet, leaves you hungry. We have to eat less and move more. But as someone who loves cheese, I heard the funniest diet plan the other day. I was sitting next to a woman who told me she wanted to shift three stones.

She said: “I’m not worried. I know I’ll do it. I’m just going to keep a bag full of tiny cheese cubes. Every time I’m almost faint with hunger, I’ll eat one tiny cube.”

So this one’s for Dundee’s werewolf women (and men) among us. And to cheese cubes.