The last blog received the most beautiful responses (thank you) which allowed the FullMoon experience to linger much longer than the lactic acid and permitted The Chelsea Flower Show to take over when Oldest Friend (OF) and I grew tired of reminiscing about our sequinned pilgrimage.

What surprised me more than completing the MoonWalk mileage though, were the people who took me aside to tick me off about a tendency to fat shame myself in my blogs. ‘What is going on with all these references to muffin tops, excess gluteus maximus and surplus back fat?’ one friend chastises, ‘you need to rein it in a little. You are not that chubby’.

‘Never apologise, never explain,’ is usually good advice but is attributed to Churchill, so I feel uneasy holding this line of response when discussing health and body image. Instead, I will stub out my cigar and concentrate on giving some context to the ability I have to fat shame myself.

In the days of yore when I started this blog I was at a crunchy cross roads in my life and self- deprecating humour served me well in my objective to get myself out of the mid-life mire. Wallowing – enjoyable though it can be – becomes tedious and non-productive after a while. My intention was not to self-deprecate to elicit a haul of compliments (if it was, I failed miserably) for my strict Methodist upbringing would have chastised any manipulation in the direction of vanity. In my family a sigh of, ‘I feel these trousers may not flatter my backside, what do you think?,’ would gain a response of, ‘too right, Tubby, go and change into a skirt’.

And, point of fact, my childhood family nickname was indeed ‘Tubby’.

I have written before that my mother and I bonded over our shared body shape – a bodacious, curvy body hefted on ‘strong, substantial bones’; my siblings were blessed with the svelte limbs and height that came from the paternal side of the family. I grew up watching my mother rattle through a litany of dieting and exercise rituals, starting with her membership of The Women’s League of Health & Fitness (music to movement while wearing satin black gym pants and a cream sleeveless top) and ending in ownership of a purple tracksuit that I have documented many times before.

If you too are ‘sixty something’ and have lived around those who have had to pay attention to calories, like me you will be be able to reference the following diet timeline of PLJ Lemon Juice diet; the Fanny Craddock Grapefruit Diet’; the Scarsdale and Atkin’s Diets; The Cabbage Soup Diet and the F Plan. My mother researched and partook in all of these snake oil options and by the time I was 15 I was her dieting partner in crime and had a distorted perception of my actual shape. I mistook the reading on the bathroom scales to be an accurate representation of how I actually looked in the mirror. School exercise consisted of hockey or netball (I was never picked for either team) and involved public humiliation while wearing hideous blue gym knickers, so it is little surprise that running did not become my metabolic and wellbeing friend until I was much, much older.

I do not blame my mother at all for this legacy for her own Mother-In-Law had a tendency to reference mum’s ‘heavy frame’ and told her – frequently and loudly – that she should have the self discipline to avoid the dessert trolley. My grandmother lived off Ryvita biscuits and in later life would alarm us grandchildren by dropping into a startling sit-up routine before breakfast and wearing the most excruciating corset on the hottest Summer day (sadly Spanx was not an option back then). My female world was colluding to inform me that surplus pounds must be hidden from the public and that dieting is a necessary demonstration of self-discipline. Perhaps it is not surprising that I grew into a self-deprecating emotional eater.

If I had turned to Weight Watchers – and running – before I hit the age of 40, I believe I would have been able to self-deprecate about my looks much, much earlier and have subjected my reader to my dragonfly irreverence so much sooner. I hope you would have seen this as my own weird type of body confidence, in effect laughing at my inability to look like a stick insect but metaphorically morphing into a dragonfly in the process.

Instead I lost years gazing into my chubby naval and bemoaning my pitifully slow metabolic rate without realising that everyone is navigating their nutritional profit and loss account in some way.

I love the new body positive movement and I hope that – unlike my mother – you will not find me walking down the High Street exclaiming, ‘My goodness, people have let themselves go!’. If being body positive means getting on with the things you want to do rather than staying at home worrying about how you look, it has my full support. I do worry however that this movement may disguise a rising appetite for fat jabs and micro gym workouts which may become the new fast fix of choice. I hear that Weight Watchers intends to fight on against this ‘sticking plaster’ trend and is currently going through its own season of naval gazing to make it financially relevant and viable again. Thank goodness, we need realistic role models and some group support if we are to feel good about ourselves – oh, and a healthy slice of humour.

My Weight Watcher membership ‘back then’ proved to be the best investment I ever made in my sense of self worth. I have not needed to return – although I would feel no shame should I need to do so – for my membership allowed me to ditch a legacy of fad diets and to gain a sense of humour about my looks. I also picked up healthy eating habits for the first time in my life. I refuse to take myself too seriously again and a little gentle self-fat shaming is my way of ‘getting over myself’. As my hairdresser always says, ‘I have worked hard on this body and I have matured like a fine claret. I have now replaced my former beer belly with a Majestic Wine Cellar’.

No amount of dieting is going to relieve the excess poundage I carry in my Cyrano-esque nose or my Grecian muffin top and I can live with this. My body does a great job for me and I am blessed with good health. Weight Watchers gave me a balance sheet to value food as fuel and I trust that I now manage my nutritional account with the emotional literacy that recognises my body for what it allows me to do. Like a snail carries its home upon its back, I can carry my plumptious derriere instead of a portable cushion.

Oldest Friend has now sent me the full photo album from our marathon MoonWalk around London last weekend. She apologises that my bum bag seems to be a prominent feature in many of the snaps. For once I decide not to fat-shame myself and decide not to tell her that this is actually my own flesh rather than a portable body belt of chocolate snacks. OF has always viewed me through her dragonfly spectacles and I depend on her support – specifically for not sharing her back catalogue of photographic evidence of my ‘body negative’ years. I have got my self-deprecation, Weight Watchers and my plumptious backside to fall back on and there is even a fat chance that I may start being kind to myself in my future blog life. Reader beware.