So, after forever of trying to muddle through and do it myself at home, I joined a Slimming World group this evening.

I’ve been to so many of these things before and always felt pretty matter-of-fact about it. I’ve certainly never been emotional at the scales, which is what happened tonight. The consultant asked me what I wanted to weigh, and I burst into tears. Then he showed me the kind of range that I might think about and I cried again. Not because I’m so overweight now, but because of seemingly impossible challenge of having so much I need to lose.

Slimming World’s great in that it’s all about choosing personal goals and weights we’re comfortable with.

But whatever I chose, achieving anything reasonable just seemed a very, very long way down.

I’m hoping that the high emotion is a sign that this time it might just work.

The first time we went to Slimming World, a few years ago now, we giggled to ourselves afterwards about how the tiniest of losses were celebrated.

I’d only ever been to Weight Watchers before, and their weight announcements are much more hushed – actual losses aren’t even mentioned sometimes, being replaced with a sort of knowing look from the leader and a whispered word unintelligible to the rest of the group

But with Slimming World, even though it was all dreamed up in a little Derbyshire village, it has this sort of celebratory American tone to it. And the first time we went, there was a woman four seats down from us. Let’s call her Sue (I don’t have the slightest clue whether or not that’s actually her name).

Sue had been going to the classes for eight months and she’d lost half a pound. Not half a pound that week, but half a pound in total over the whole eight month period. But when the leader announced it, she did it as if Sue had just climbed a mountain or run a marathon. And everyone joined in with their applause.

Sue took the shine off a bit because she wanted to talk about how she couldn’t keep a yogurt down, and she couldn’t really grasp what the leader was saying when she was trying to explain that it’s no longer 1982 and none of us have to eat yogurt if we don’t want to; slimming doesn’t have to mean suffering.

But (and I’m getting to the point here) I’m finding myself in Sue’s shoes.

I’ve been at this round of Slimming World for over a month and my net loss is less than a pound.

I went down five, down 3.6, up 7, down 3.6 and now up 4.4

I was doing so well this week until I gave in to a battered sausage and three trifle bakewells.

But I’m starting again. Determined and renewed.

Pastryless Quiche for lunch, I think.