But why are you dieting, you don’t have a shred of meat on you!

So echoed the refrain of my colleagues when I told them I wanted to loose weight. These are people who know I’ve been told to lighten the load to prolong the time before I need a knee replacement (I had my first operation last year, at 25, which has left me with reduced mobility and flexibility in the knee, still perfectly able to walk and drive, just don’t ask me to jump or run), who know I have high blood pressure, and who know I’d like children someday. To be honest I just thought they were being nice.

Then as I drove home last night it hit me – I’m the smallest person in my team. There are 14 people on my team, and with the exception of an ex-army runner they are all overweight or obese. It just struck me that fat is now the norm. So much so that we can’t even really recognise what is healthy and what isn’t. My BMI is putting me at the threshold where chunky normal passes over to overweight, and medically I’m being advised to loose weight, but to most of my colleagues they assumed I was normal or even underweight. Yet most of my colleague’s doctors don’t mention the F or W word for fear of offending their patient, and it’s this fear of admitting something isn’t right which is why we’re all just gradually getting more and more rotund.

Obesity is a topic we are happy to talk about in sweeping societal terms, but somehow it doesn’t apply to ourselves or our loved ones.

One of my colleagues was confronted about being obese when she joined a new practice, to which she replied in all seriousness that it wasn’t her weight but her height that was the issue, if she were 5”10 rather than 5”3 there wouldn’t be an issue.

I’m all for the tough love, sugar coating it isn’t going to help anyone. So let’s call a spade a spade and admit the washing machine didn’t shrink your trousers, shops don’t keep making a size 10 smaller and smaller, and in no world is an apple Danish a healthy breakfast just because it contains fruit.

4 days until D-Day Week 1. I just hope my first diet book arrives soon; I’d like to get a chance to read it before diving in head first.