Is it just ME?

Or has ‘diet’ become a dirty word?

SINCE I have been on one, on and off, for the past ten years, I’m perplexed to find that, suddenly, going on a diet is taboo. You have only to mention the word and it’s as if you’ve been involved in an illegal activity.

Even Weight Watchers has now rebranded itself WW in an effort to focus not on dieting but on health and wellness.

I mean, WW? You can’t even say it without feeling you’ve got a toffee in your mouth and are but one consonant away from a web address or the World Wrestling Federation.

Are we now going to waddle along to our local church hall once a week to be ‘ well’ instead of thinner?

Isn’t it time we stopped tiptoeing around the issue and mangling the language? A diet is a diet. Whether Paleo, Atkins or Slimming World. You go to Weight Watchers to watch your weight.

It’s about eating less to lose those extra pounds most of us are carrying around our middle like a rubber ring. Standing on a set of scales will tell you how much you weigh, not how well you are.

Let’s be frank, we can talk about clean eating until the cupboard is bare, but most of us just want to fit into the dress we bought last year — and what that requires is eating fewer doughnuts, not polishing our insides with hemp seeds until they are shiny. Cutting out crisps is not wellness, it’s common sense.

I’m doing the 5:2. OK, it’s not working, but I defend my right to eat fewer than 500 calories two days a week and call it a diet, which is what it surely is.

In return, I promise not to pull a face in horror at your cabbage, kimchi and Moon Dust smoothies, so long as you don’t drink them near me. Deal?

I’ve been on a diet for ten years, but now it’s as if I’m involved in an illegal activity