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different day, a different week – a new start. Reduce your calorie intake and everything will feel different. Believe me, trust me. It will all be OK. Don’t let yourself fall here; don’t let them in.
    I bet you feel strange. You have nothing to say. You sit and you listen in but you don’t react. Watch the conversation bounce around the room. It’s not interesting because it’s not part of this great game. In fact, it’s distracting. It’s stopping you and it’s taking up your time. And time is precious. You are supposed to be focusing on the plan and with all this mindless, lazy talk, nothing is being achieved. What is the point of that? So you nod and pull smiles to agree with what is being said but really you are somewhere else. You are practically floating. How does it feel to become so transparent, so airy, so bodiless? Just don’t let the secret out. The feeling isn’t half so good if the opposition want to join in. Leave them to their cups of milky tea and sugary coffee.
    ‘Water, please.’
    Or, even better, Diet Coke, because the bubbles make you high and light and give you a full feeling in a nice sort of way. Could something better ever be invented?
    Numb the emotion. There is ‘nothing wrong’. Become the bluffer; you know you can do it. They are bound to offer you food and it is easier to take it and work out a disposal method. Wrap up your pasta in a paper towel and throw it down the toilet. Take out your microwave meal, put it on a plate, eat a little and then remove a big section to dispose of into the nearest bin. Make sure it is well buried. Return with just a little on your plate to cover your tracks. Even make a comment:
    ‘That was delicious.’ See how much I have eaten!’
    Even better, avoid the house at mealtimes and try and eatonly on your own. The more you get out and about, the more you can forget to eat, plus all that extra walking kills off those nasty calories.
    If you are forced (with no option) to eat solid food then remember that running on the spot in the privacy of your own room can help get rid of the food: push that stuff out of your system. Push it. Squeeze it, Grace. Restrict and restrain.
    If you are having a bad day, one where things are getting on top of you, then push it hard for just a few hours. You will really feel the shakes. I guarantee you will have a good day after this. Awake to forty-five minutes of aerobics and eat an apple. Walk a couple of miles to the swimming pool and swim fifty lengths then walk home and repeat the aerobics session. Can you feel the body quiver? Can you feel the shake on the inside?
    Sometimes it is easier to stay inside. It is sick-making watching the outside world and all its fallacies. What is the point of caking yourself in make-up and parading through a pub? Sit tight, curl yourself up into an icy, bony ball and focus on making it right to the bottom of those scales. The world is loud and obtrusive. Watch them all letting go, drinking pint after pint, wetting their greedy lips. Lie down and feel how hard your body has worked – how good you can feel now you have battered it into submission. Lie and count the minutes slowly, one by one, and take yourself out of this world.
    Of course, the quietness won’t go down well. They will try and make you crack. They will suggest you aren’t yourself; perhaps you are depressed? But you are
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yourself this way, this is the real you, not the false, outward-smiling one – you know, and you control, everything that passes your lips. You know exactly what you contain, how much it weighs and how many calories there are in each thing youtake in. You are so in control it scares them. They marvel at your ferocious willpower. Believe me, they will never have such willpower.
    Just turn the conversation to them, put the onus back on their own messed-up, uncontrolled existences. ‘Don’t worry, I’m fine, honestly. I’m glad you care, but I can sort it out. Anyway, how are you feeling?’ It