Scottish Daily Mail

How i’ve finally stopped HATING my body

Comedian HELEN LEDERER spent 40 years tormented by her weight. Then, when she almost got a gastric band, she realised things had to change

- by Helen Lederer

The book launch had unfolded so differentl­y in my imaginatio­n. It was held in a trendy Covent Garden private members’ club, where I had hoped my own glamour might stand up to the scrutiny of the stylish crowd.

Champagne glass in hand, I planned to work the room in a glittery, size 10 dress, drawing admiring glances from the assembled VIPs. Naturally, not a single canapé would pass my lips.

Alas, I was forced to attend swathed in my usual uniform of forgiving, black drapery, designed to draw as little attention to my size 16 frame as possible — and stifled my nerves by snuffling as much of the house white as I could, with the odd crisp for extra courage. The irony of promoting my first novel — a comedy about a middle-aged woman’s increasing­ly crazed efforts to slim — while being the fattest I have ever been in my life has certainly not been lost on me.

At 12st, I am at least 2st heavier than I ought to be for my 5ft 2in height — in fact, probably borderline obese.

Although technicall­y a work of fiction, given my whole life has essentiall­y been one long diet, I certainly had a wealth of autobiogra­phical material to draw on for my heroine’s myriad forms of self-denial.

I have tried appetite suppressan­ts, joined slimming clubs, (unwittingl­y) taken amphetamin­e injections and bought industrial- control underwear like other women buy handbags. All in an attempt to whittle myself down to a weight that society will approve of.

In many ways, the year spent writing the book was a therapeuti­c process that made me think long and hard about my own fraught relationsh­ip with my body.

Yet even committing the madness of these measures to paper didn’t stop me wanting to go even further extremes. On the contrary. Six months ago, with the manuscript submitted and in a last-ditch panic to look slender for the launch, I actually booked myself in for a gastric band operation.

With the consultati­ons done, I had

even chosen the date to go under the knife, rejecting the consultant’s suggestion­s of a cooling-off period to think it through and refusing to discuss it with my husband.

It was only when I was sent the list of baby foods I’d be forced to survive on for weeks — and realised I’d never eat pizza again, unless pureed — that the sad reality of life post-band truly hit me. What was the point? With three days to go, I pulled out.

I realised that, when I looked back on my life — whatever my age, and whatever my weight — I couldn’t actually remember a moment when I didn’t feel fat, or wasn’t obsessing about food.

All that lost time and energy, wasted on periodic cycles of faddish dieting followed by the inevitable episodes of self-loathing, as the weight went back on. Aged 60 and a size 16, it hit me that it was time to accept that I had tried everything in my war against fat — and failed. I had to make peace with my body, rather than keep fighting against it.

The battle had begun in childhood. I was always round and, after being given steroid injections at the age of ten to treat my chronic asthma, became so plump I earned myself the school nickname ‘Wagglebott­om’ during PE.

I desperatel­y longed to be like the pretty, athletic girls at my South London school, but my genes — Isle of Wight and Czech — were against me. I had short legs, a plump tummy and a resistance to running around the lacrosse pitch in the rain for no good reason. my only defence was being funny.

my mother Jeanne didn’t share my desire to be ‘normal’. She was small and curvy, but always comfortabl­e with her size and believed firmly in self-indulgence. If I think of her now, it’s with a cheery glass of Dubonnet in one hand and a nibble of some sort in the other.

Consequent­ly, when my sister Janet and I got home from school each day, we were greeted by a spread of sandwiches and cake waiting for us on the table.

Then, when my father Peter, a civil engineer, got home from work, came the second sitting: a full-blown supper. What with the constant baking of my beloved Czech grandmothe­r, I basically lived in a world made of cake.

By the time I was 15, I realised I needed to take control of my weight. It was 1970, and the fashionabl­e look was waif-like and ethereal, with loon pants. I gave up eating school lunches in f avour of Limmits sli mming biscuits, and they must have worked, because I remember going around in tight, needlecord trousers and woolly jumpers that stopped at my now nonexisten­t waist.

I must have been about a size 12 but, by that stage, it didn’t matter how big or small I was. In my head, my selfimage had firmly fixed for ever as ‘fat’.

As a social worker in my mid-20s, I discovered what I thought was the answer to my problems. A Harley Street diet doctor prescribed me a suspicious­ly cheap course of injections, which sent me whizzing around — with no need to sleep, let alone eat — yet talking 19 to the dozen.

Unsurprisi­ngly, the weight dropped off. But when I had dwindled to a size 10, concerned friends started telling me my head now looked too big for my body and my behaviour was getting stranger. Which led to the shock discovery I’d unknowingl­y been dosed up on amphetamin­es — and, of course, the weight immediatel­y piled back on the moment I stopped.

EmBArkIng on a new showbiz career — beginning as a slightly quirky stand-up at The Comedy Store in the 1980s, going on to become Catriona in Ab Fab and now alcoholic midwife mariam in Hollyoaks — certainly didn’t help matters, with the odd hours and constant opportunit­ies to socialise.

After too many 3am finishes with fellow comics in the mid-1980s, I embarked on myriad Draconian regimes, such as the powdered milkshake diet, which meant you couldn’t drink alcohol or eat anything solid — and always had to leave parties early.

Curious to discover the roots of my overeating, I even saw a therapist. But after a few sessions at £100 a pop, I decided I might be (financiall­y and psychologi­cally) better off just getting drunk and forgetting about it.

Fortunatel­y, I can’t say my weight impacted on my love-life. I always had plenty of boyfriends and was in my mid-30s when I met my first husband, the journalist roger Alton, at the launch of my first book, Coping With Helen Lederer. Judging by my photo on the cover, I was actually pretty slim at the time but, of course, I didn’t feel it.

Ours was a whirlwind romance, and I remember being particular­ly touched early on when, appalled to find my fridge totally empty apart from a bottle of wine, he left a bag of groceries on my front doorstep.

We married after 18 months together, by which time I was pregnant with our daughter, Hannah, and blowing up like a balloon.

We divorced when Hannah was just one — we just weren’t meant to be together — which led to a darkish time of watching Spot The Dog, eating for England to cheer myself up and yo-yoing up and down the scales at Weight Watchers meetings.

I had the odd fling over the following years and became adept at hiding my size. Larger women will know the tricks: taking your underwear off when you’re actually in the bed, keeping the lights off, backing out of the room to go to the loo.

At one stage, I decided that if I was going to be fat, I’d at least be brown and fat, so I took carotene tablets. I still remember my t hen- boyfri e nd admiring my lovely tan and marvelling at how it had even managed to reach the palms of my hands and the soles of my feet.

I shudder to think how close my weight came to coming between my now-husband Chris and I when we met at a dinner dance in Wiltshire 15 years ago. Finding ourselves alone in a room at the end of the night, I had the happy realisatio­n that this tall, handsome stranger seemed to be just as keen on me as I was on him.

There was just one problem — when we reached the crucial disrobing stage, it was, alas, rather more complicate­d than slipping off a wisp of lacy lingerie.

Instead, I spent a full five minutes struggling out of an elasticate­d, all-inone shape-smoother, under which I’d donned not just a girdle, but an impenetrab­le pair of unforgivin­g beige Spanx control pants and a sturdy support bra, in a bid to trick onlookers into thinking there was a decent figure underneath.

Only genuine passion could have carried us through the awkwardnes­s as he had to help me yank it all off — that and the fact he’s a gP and had, I assume, seen it all before.

AFTEr so long together, Chris knows better than to comment on the subject of ‘ size’. But I know he’d rather I was slimmer for my health. After all, my father died aged 52 from a heart attack and my mother at 77 from diabetes, so my genes are distinctly dodgy.

If I lost some weight, it’s likely that we would have more time together.

And still, I would like to lose my barrel of a belly and the extra weight on my face that I think makes me look rather cross. Yet in my happier moments, I’ve finally started to achieve a sort of acceptance about the way I am. I remain in awe of the slender, showbiz contempora­ries I see on chat shows, who seem to look effortless­ly amazing, but I’ve made peace with the fact I will never look that way. Perhaps my role is to make the rest of us laugh at our own failure to achieve the skinny ideal. Thankfully, my career has never been about my looks. I may never love my figure, but people often comment on my eyes, and I am, at least, happy with my eyebrows.

I wear more black lace than morticia Addams, because I think it’s a look that works for me, and I’ve discovered a tailor near my South London home who can put extra panels in any Topshop outfit if necessary.

Yes, I will probably always eat and drink a little too much, but I’m determined to end the sad cycle of diet and binge without going under the knife.

Like so many women, I have already spent far too long in a constant state of dissatisfa­ction with my body.

It’s time to be kind to it, not to waste any more of my life denying its pleasures.

Losing it by Helen Lederer, £7.99, Pan Macmillan, is out now.

 ??  ?? Obsession: But Helen is now happy in her skin
Obsession: But Helen is now happy in her skin
 ??  ?? Quirky comic: Helen with Joanna Lumley in Absolutely Fabulous
Quirky comic: Helen with Joanna Lumley in Absolutely Fabulous

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United Kingdom