I've sacrificed everything to stay this thin at 63....

At the weekend, I attended a lunch at a scenic pub in Kew, west London. A gaggle of middle-aged women, we spent a leisurely two hours laughing and tucking into a traditional roast – well, all except me. I picked at a lentil and beetroot salad. Then, when the cake tray came round, one of my friends pointed at the tiramisu and said: 'Kate, have some – you're a beanpole, you can eat what you want.' The others nodded encouragingly.

Image Credit: Mail Online [Our writer argues that having a fat jab is just a quick fix for something most women could tackle with good eating – insisting that it's a cheat]

Here we go again, I thought. The belief that slim women simply don't put on weight, at any age, no matter how many slices of tiffin they scoff. Of course we do. The truth is, I've sacrificed everything to stay thin at 63 – even the light-hearted, devil-may-care woman I used to be.

Image Credit: Mail Online [Studies have shown that slim women are not only treated better and more respected, but even earn more than their curvier counterparts]

The me who would invite friends round for a relaxed dinner with big bowls of creamy Eton mess for dessert, devoured amid gales of laughter. She's gone. 'Come on, Kate, just a mouthful, you used to be such fun,' a friend mourned the other day, when I politely refused her potato gratin.

But 'fun' won't keep me a size 10. And so I abstain from it. Forgive me then if I howl in frustration when I hear that diet queen Oprah Winfrey has utterly dismissed my years of hard graft by implying that all slender people are somehow effortlessly so.

Kate Mulvey says she's sacrificed everything to stay this thin. Our writer argues that having a fat jab is just a quick fix for something most women could tackle with good eating – insisting that it's a cheat. Studies have shown that slim women are not only treated better and more respected, but even earn more than their curvier counterparts.

'I thought thin people had more willpower,' she trilled on her podcast last month. 'But one of the things I realised the very first time I took a GLP-1 [the hormone found in Ozempic] was that they're not even thinking about it. 'They're eating when they're hungry and they're stopping when they're full.'.

As if we thinnies never suffer from intrusive hunger thoughts. Absolutely not true, Oprah. Slim women like me are just as prone to middle-aged spread – and the voice in our head that says 'go on, have some'. The difference is that instead of whingeing about piling on the pounds and then polishing off a plate of egg and chips, I have chosen to take control. To fight the food noise with every inch of self-discipline I possess.

I am a firm believer that for most people, staying slim is a lifestyle choice, not an impossibility. Far from being repulsed by junk food, I truly crave bags of crisps, almond croissants and tubs of strawberry ice cream – but I work hard not to give in to those yearnings.

Why do I care so much?. Call me a bad feminist, but how I look is important to me. When I look in the mirror and see a flat stomach, slim hips and firm thighs looking back at me, all the sacrifices are worth it. Of course, I realise societal pressures may have shaped my opinion. In my teens, I felt great anxiety around the issue of weight. My mother was blessed with an hourglass figure but put on weight easily so was always on a diet. Her fear of getting fat rubbed off on me.

But it was a fear shared by all my schoolmates – we would compare our figures during lunch break, convinced no boys would fancy us if we weren't slim. Were we wrong? While it is depressing to admit, a lot of men still prefer skinny. And despite the body-positivity brigade asking us to embrace our bulges, various respected studies have shown that slim women are not only treated better and more respected, but even earn more than their curvier counterparts.

So I won't apologise for being a killjoy when it comes to food. Only the other week at my nephew's birthday party, I shook my head when slices of chocolate fudge cake (my favourite) were being passed around. That earned me the inevitable eye roll and grimace of disappointment, which stings.

I've also ditched altogether the sort of evenings out with gourmand friends where a three-course meal, wine and even post-prandial brandy are the main focus. I won't let myself join in, so I find such gatherings boring. Even boyfriends need to be on a similar foodie page to me. When I met fellow writer Jake* two years ago, the chemistry was instant, but while I didn't mind the protruding tummy like a medicine ball strapped to his torso, his exercise phobia and love of boozy dinners I couldn't handle.

When he insisted for the umpteenth time on telling the waiter 'two spoons, mate' after ordering the dessert – his way of trying to make me 'relax' and go his way – I had to put my foot down and dump him. I simply couldn't afford to be loved up and happy – at the cost of gaining weight.

All this self-denial may sound deathly, but it wasn't always like this. I was naturally slim in my twenties and thirties and genuinely could eat what I wanted. I wasn't an overeater, but I could knock back Chinese takeaways and not put on weight. However, come middle age, my metabolism started to slow. Love handles appeared around my waist, seemingly overnight.