BRYONY GORDON: I was fat-shamed at eight and quickly learned my value was based on my dress size. It plunged me into a world of depression, OCD and eating disorders... this is how I finally snapped out of it

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When I was only eight years old, I heard the words that all girls growing up in the 1980s and 1990s dreaded. ‘Gosh, hasn’t Bryony got an appetite on her?’

It was bellowed by a friend of my father’s, who had come round for Sunday lunch. At the time, such comments about female bodies were so normalised that it barely registered on anyone else’s radar. But to me it felt completely humiliating.

I put down the Yorkshire pudding I had been enjoying and felt a hot stab of shame run through my body. I somehow knew that his words were not meant as a compliment, that to be a girl and have an appetite were not compatible things.

I knew this because… well, how could you not, living in a world where it was perfectly normal for women to exist on a single bowl of Special K cereal for an entire day, until they were allowed their SlimFast shake for dinner?

No matter that this fifty-something man clearly had rather a healthy appetite himself – if the large belly that overhung his trousers was anything to go by – it was me, an eight-year-old who had gone for a second helping of roast potatoes, who was the real problem.

Like so many other women, I was quick to learn as a child that food was the enemy. Nobody wanted a greedy girl – never mind that the definition of greedy was eating anything more than a small side salad.

My most abiding childhood memories don’t involve holidays or birthdays, but the diets my mother and her friends constantly forced themselves to do. There was the cabbage soup diet, the grapefruit diet, the Cambridge diet, the Scarsdale diet.

All were accompanied by the background soundtrack of Jane Fonda crying ‘Go for the burn!’ from the tiny TV in the corner of our living room, where my mum could usually be found slavishly following the Hollywood icon’s popular aerobic workout video.

Bryony Gordon as a child, when she quickly learned that food was the enemy

And so, just as my mother had learnt from her mother, and she had no doubt learnt from hers, I knew that my value was mostly found in the size on the label of my dress, or on the scales in the bathroom. From then on I didn’t consume food – I tolerated it.

A few dizzy spells during adolescence had taught me that I had to eat occasionally, but by my early 20s I had learnt what I thought was the greatest trick ever invented: to immediately throw the food up again.

By the time I turned 30, my eating disorder had robbed me of my sanity, not to mention a back tooth. But I was a size 10, so what did any of that matter? As Kate Moss said, nothing tastes as good as skinny feels! So why, then, did I mostly feel awful all the time?

But then something miraculous happened: my body somehow allowed me to get pregnant, despite the appalling way I had treated it. Suddenly responsible for a life other than my own, I started eating properly, stopped throwing up, and began marvelling at my body as it grew bigger, rather than smaller.

And when my daughter arrived, I looked at this perfect, plump baby and knew that I didn’t want her to waste a single moment of her precious life obsessing about food.

I began raging at magazine articles discussing celebrities who had instantly ‘snapped back’ to their pre-baby bodies. The only thing I was snapping back at was diet culture, and how absolutely miserable it had made me.

Plus, how could a woman be expected to go on a diet just as she was recovering from an emergency C-section? How was I supposed to restrict my calorie intake while also being expected to breastfeed a newborn?

So I continued to eat. Pasta, desserts, biscuits, all the things I had deprived myself of for fear of being seen to have an appetite. Carbs, I realised, were not the enemy, but glorious energy for my body!

Bryony Gordon now, after embracing carbs - which she says has helped her mental health

I didn’t know it, but as I began to eat, I was taking the first step to recovery not just from eating disorders, but also OCD, depression and addiction. It was almost as if, by feeding myself, I was believing in myself.

So it didn’t surprise me at all to read this week that dieting is linked to low mood. A study, carried out by researchers at the University of Toronto and published in the British Medical Journal, found that people on low-calorie diets were more likely to experience clinical depression.

Scientists suggested that restricting food can result in ‘nutritional deficiencies’ that affect brain health and mood. ‘Lack of weight loss or weight cycling [fluctuating] while dieting in a real-world setting may lead to worsening depressive symptoms,’ said the researchers.

My journey to good mental health has been long and complicated, as is so often the case. But if there is one thing I have learnt through the many therapists and experts I have been lucky enough to spend time with, it’s that your emotional wellbeing doesn’t stand a chance if you’re not eating properly.

Forget mindfulness, forget meditation, forget even antidepressants and therapy. If you’re experiencing severe anxiety or depression, the first thing you need to do is make sure your brain and body is being properly fed.

I remember a counsellor explaining to me that having breakfast could help alleviate OCD symptoms, because the levelling out of blood sugar has a positive impact on the neurotransmitters in your brain.

Similarly, newly sober alcoholics are warned never to find themselves hungry (or ‘hangry’, as it’s often described), as it can lead to so much stress that they risk picking up a drink again.

Meanwhile, a friend on weight-loss jabs confessed to me the other day that she only knows she needs to eat because she starts to feel furious with everyone around her. How much happier would we all be if we just allowed ourselves to eat?

It’s why I now eat a solid three meals a day, every day, and ensure I never find myself in a pattern of restricting food (or bingeing it – the two tend to go together).

As someone with a history of mental illness, I simply cannot risk skipping a meal. It may have taken almost 40 years, but I’ve finally realised that my peace of mind – and an appetite – is far more important than being able to fit into a size 10 dress.

I don’t want to put the boot in Brad, but…

Brad Pitt wearing the £3,000 Saint Laurent boots for a GQ photoshoot

Brad Pitt on the cover of this month's GQ magazine

Keen fashion observers will have noticed that the must-have summer accessory for the man in your life is… leather waders. Yep, Brad Pitt appears on the cover of this month’s GQ in a pair of the £3,000 Saint Laurent ‘boots’, while both Pedro Pascal and Alexander Skarsgard have recently walked red carpets in theirs.

Coincidentally, it was announced this week that Jonathan Anderson has been made the creative director of Dior, meaning that all but one of the major fashion houses is now run by a bloke. If thigh-high boots for boys are the result of the fashion industry’s masculinisation, then heaven help our menfolk.

Kris Jenner, 69, shares a plastic surgeon with her daughter Kylie

Why I won’t be following Kris’s lead

Kris Jenner has a new, line-free face, and now everyone is saying she looks younger than her daughter Kim Kardashian. We learned that the 69-year-old matriarch (right) shares a plastic surgeon with another of her children, Kylie Jenner, who this week shared the details of her boob job.

I hope women of my generation take a deep breath and refuse to bow to this ridiculous pressure to appear forever young. If looking older than our mothers is what it takes to protect the mental health of our daughters, then so be it.

According to a new study, ‘microstresses’ such as being stuck in traffic or the Wi-Fi not working, can be as exhausting as major life events. I think I knew this already. I’m everyone’s go-to girl for sharing their traumatic experiences – life-changing hospital appointments, meetings with lawyers to discuss terrible divorces – but the moment I can’t find my keys, I spiral. Don’t sweat the small stuff? It’s the only thing I can sweat.

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‘Noooooo!’ I cried. It’s not that I feel sad about her growing up. It’s that, as a 44-year-old woman who also played with Sylvanians in the 1980s, I’m still not ready to say goodbye to the small furry toys. Fortunately, the toys’ creators have cottoned on to their ‘kidult’ appeal, and are planning to sell more of the dolls to people like me, after the declining birth rate caused a drop in profits. Sign me up for a family of giraffes and a couple of alpacas.

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