YOU can eat for two now! I was told when I was pregnant with my first child 18 years ago.

So I did. And quickly became twice the size I once was - or at least it felt like I did.

Once I was given the green light to become a pig, I continued to be a pig and failed to lose the weight (except for a brief halcyon period when I doggedly lost weight for my wedding a few years ago) I gained after my three pregnancies.

The problem, you see, is that I have always had a taste for sugar and carbs (“My name is Katy Rice and I am a carboholic”) so giving me permission to eat all I wanted fed my lifelong addictions.

So, having spent much of my adult life attempting to lose weight, I am now a week into my latest diet, having shocked myself into it by weighing myself for the first time in years. I knew it wouldn’t be good as I have spent most of this year immobile thanks to a pesky back problem. And when you can barely move - thus stopping you from going out much - depression can descend. And what do I do when I’m down? I eat. What else is there to do?

And so the weight has piled on. Not helped by my own natural greed, of course. Greed feeds greed, I’ve discovered. The more you eat, the more you crave. And then habits form. Bad habits. Habits that are hard to break. Like the family bag of crisps mid-afternoon. The packet of biscuits hidden behind the cushion and secretly consumed during a 9pm drama on the telly. The box of Magnums in the freezer - for the children, of course. The jumbo bar of Fruit & Nut stuffed behind the microwave - for emergencies.

But no more. I am a changed woman. I have discovered the 8-Week Blood Sugar Diet, which flags up an “average weight loss: 14kg in 8 weeks”. Two stone in eight weeks! By Christmas! I can do that!

But hang on a minute… what’s the catch? No diet can be that quick and effective, can it? It can if you cut your calories to 800 a day, which is the secret of this diet, which aims to keep your blood sugar levels in check. Despite the fact that I am not diabetic or even showing pre-diabetic signs (how surprising, given my sugar intake this year alone), it’s the do-able time limit that’s made me think: OK, even I can do a diet for eight short weeks, just to see if it’s the one that works for me.

So it began last Monday. Out went the toast for breakfast and in came the porridge. Out went the bagel and cheese for lunch and in came the salad, out went the pasta or potatoes with dinner and in came the broccoli, and out went all the junk food. As usual at the beginning of a diet, I’m feeling smug and skinny - I don’t look skinny, of course, I just have a very empty stomach - and suffering the effects of sugar withdrawal, not in the least abated by devouring the odd apple (yes, it’s allowed).

I’m determined to go the full eight weeks, no matter how loudly my stomach grumbles, and I’m not going to stop even after that. Christmas, I admit, will be a bit of a problem - all that stuffing and Christmas pud, not to mention the alcohol - but after a short hiatus, I intend on resuming my diet in the new year.

I am determined I will reach my target weight (don’t even ask how much I weighed at the start last Monday because it’s just too humiliating) and I will stick to it so that I will no longer have to spend the rest of my life binge-eating followed by bouts of binge-dieting.

Wish me luck…

The Argus: Republican Presidential nominee Donald J. Trump

So Donald Trump has trumped himself. He has been revealed, via video evidence, as a man who thinks women are there for the taking by men like him.

Footage from 2005 shows the US presidential candidate boasting that after downing a few Tic Tacs he “just start[s] kissing them [women]. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them. You can do anything.”

A man who’s used to getting his own way by dint of his wealth, he doesn’t take kindly to being told “No” by women or by anyone. That means he won’t listen to anyone else either because he’s used o getting his own way.

Not ideal material for the potential president of a country that has a population of more than 157 million women, I feel, but his blatantly sexist attitude certainly hasn’t stopped him so far. Let’s hope the American people will let him know the meaning of the word “No” when they vote next month.