Alison Hammond loves being a "big, beautiful" woman.
Alison Hammond
The 'This Morning' presenter has battled with her weight since she was a child, but wouldn't change "being big" as she's more than happy when looking in the mirror.
In an extract from her new book 'You've Got To Laugh' which is being syndicated in The Sun newspaper, she said: "I may be up and down with my feelings when it comes to weight, but I mean it when I say that I love being big.
"I love myself and I love my largeness; I don’t look in the mirror and think, 'Oh, no, I’m so fat.' I look in the mirror and think, 'I’m beautiful, man.
"I look so good. I look fire.'"
However, she found lockdown difficult in terms of controlling her eating and would still like to shift enough weight to be able to go for a jog.
And after being told by her doctor that her blood sugar was higher than it should be, the 46-year-old former 'Big Brother' contestant knew she needed to get healthier.
She added: "What I don’t love is not being able to run.
"Unfortunately, lockdown was dire for me in terms of weight.
"I couldn’t control my eating or how much exercise I did, and I didn’t have any desire to diet.
"I just didn’t care. It was so bad.
"It wasn’t a surprise to find out from my GP that my blood sugar was higher than it should have been.
"When she diagnosed me as pre-diabetic, I was actually pleased, because to me it meant I’d basically been told I wasn’t diabetic, as I’d feared I would be.
"Something started to shift in me.
"I was still looking at myself and thinking, 'I am fire', but I was also conscious that people who are overweight run into problems as they get older, and that if I didn’t address it, the likelihood was that I would die early.
"By the time the second lockdown started to lift, I was really heavy, I was pre-diabetic and I wasn’t walking very well because of the weight I was carrying on my back."
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