Imogen Edwards-Jones has done the unthinkable - lost weight and actually kept it off. It's all down to just one woman who everyone should have on speed dial...
It happened again this morning. There I was, gently cradling my hangover, hoping to get out of the nursery run without actually having to engage with any parent, any child or indeed anyone, when I was accosted. Not quite pinned to the wall and patted down, but very much shoved up against a diminutive red plastic desk that was digging into my calves. “Right,” said the woman, scrabbling frantically about in her handbag. “I’ve got my phone out. Hand over the number. Now!”
Whose number was she after? I hear you mumble into your sandwich. Gwyneth Paltrow’s hairdresser? Cheryl Cole’s arse tattooist? Harry Styles’s… er, actually just Harry Styles? No. Although all are useful. The digits that everyone wants belong to Get The Gloss’s very own nutritionist Amelia Freer – weight loss guru to the stars, and also me.
Over the last few months I have become catnip to the rexy community. Having lost two stone and KEPT IT OFF . I know that last bit is crucial. It’s all very well losing weight. In fact I have done it many times before and have confidently gone off and blown a week’s wages in Topshop/Jigsaw/Zara only to find, three years later, a small pile of unwearables riddled with the moth in the bottom of my cupboard. But this time I have kept it off. For six months and counting.
I know I sound a little like I’m a member of AA. Six months sober/six months slim. However if you’ve been porky ALL your life suddenly being able to bend down in your plane seat and pick up a dropped pen without getting stuck is a life-changing revelation.
When Kate Moss said her famous, “Nothing tastes as good,” line, what she should have added was – life is a little easier if you are not carrying an extra 28lbs of butter around with you. You can bend down, sit up, slip through, squeeze into more places and pairs of jeans than you did before. I no longer get suffocated by my own norks in downward dog and if I ever make the mistake of running down the street, mainly after my escaping son, my backside doesn’t develop a momentum of its own.
Reactions to the less substantial me have been threefold. Firstly one of irritation. Much like Dawn French complained the other day she’d been told she’d let other fatties down by losing weight. So fellow chubsters have moaned I’ve gone too far, that I should really watch it now. They put their head to one side and grimace and possibly tut their concern as a friend and everything.
There are others who are genuinely thrilled. “Christ you were fat and now you’re not,” being the general gist. “Do you remember splitting that side-zip on your dress at James’s wedding and you had to walk around all night with your arm glued to your ribs like you’d had a stroke!” being another helpful recollection.
But the third. The pushing me into a corner and shivering like a meth head at the idea that I might have stumbled upon the Holy Grail, that the golden ticket actually did fall on to my seriously thinner doormat, is the most common. Along with a barrage of questions. What do you eat? Mainly avocado, salads, fruit, vegetables and NOT between meals. Can you drink alcohol? You’re kidding right? Life is too short and miserable without a glass of wine or a very stiff vodka. Do you exercise? Not knowingly. Can you eat chocolate? Pudding? Cake? Biscuits? Crisps? Pizza? Chips and mayonnaise ? Yes, yes, yes, yes, and Lord yes! But not all the time.
So there you have it. Amelia Freer . But before you want to strangle me for my hideous smugness, one woman gave me the hand and asked: “Have you done an English winter yet? Have you? Have you? Talk to me in April when you’ve done an English winter and not put on half a stone.”
Now there’s a challenge.