18th July 2026

Today I am going back to Slimming World.

Or, as it is known in the privacy of my own head, Fat Class.

This is not an official title, obviously. The official title is much more encouraging and involves words like “journey,” “support,” and “food optimising,” whereas Fat Class has the virtue of being both brutally concise and the sort of thing I can mutter while removing my shoes, jewellery, cardigan and, if socially acceptable, one of my less essential organs before weigh-in.

I have been away for two weeks on a very sedate cruise around the Norwegian fjords and then missed a further week due to a jaunt to the seaside. Sedate, in this context, means there was very little running, unless you count the light trot towards the dessert station when the word “profiteroles” was detected in the room.

The fjords were magnificent. Towering cliffs. Waterfalls. Clean air. Nature at its most vast and humbling. Every day I gazed upon ancient landscapes carved by ice and time, while personally being carved by pastries, cheese and the dangerous availability of three-course meals.

There is something about cruise dining that makes otherwise sensible women lose all contact with reality.

At home, I might look at a piece of cake and think, “No, best not.”

On a cruise, I look at a piece of cake and think, “Well, I have walked past a fjord today, so technically I’ve earned this.”

By day three, my moral compass had been replaced by a buffet plate.

By day five, I was eating breakfast as though preparing for a small famine.

By day ten, I had developed the calm, focused expression of a woman who knows exactly where the good biscuits are kept.

And now, inevitably, comes the reckoning.

The weigh-in.

The little square of judgement.

The metal oracle.

The polite lady at the desk who will say something kind and diplomatic while the scales reveal that my body has interpreted “holiday” as “national emergency: store resources immediately.”

I know the routine. I will arrive wearing the lightest possible clothing, as if a thinner T-shirt can undo fourteen days of enthusiastic carbohydrate diplomacy. I will step onto the scales with the expression of someone entering a witness protection programme. I will look straight ahead, breathe shallowly, and silently negotiate with gravity.

Perhaps it won’t be too bad.

Perhaps the walking helped.

Perhaps sea air has slimming properties.

Perhaps the ship’s scales, the cabin mirrors and my trousers are all part of a coordinated misinformation campaign.

This is the sort of optimism Fat Class encourages: fragile, delusional, but necessary.

And yet, there is something oddly comforting about going back. Not because I expect miracles. At 60, I am old enough to know that miracles are rare, especially when heavily buttered. But because going back is the point.

Anyone can make a fresh start when they feel virtuous, motivated and full of herbal tea. The real test is returning after two weeks of eating as if the buffet were a personal challenge issued by Norway itself.

This is the new decade, apparently. Not glamorous reinvention. Not a dramatic montage in flattering gym wear. Just a woman of a certain age standing in a community hall, hoping her bra is not adding unnecessary pounds.

I will face the music.

I will accept the number.

I will nod wisely, as though this was all part of a controlled experiment.

Then I will make the traditional post-holiday promises: more vegetables, less bread, fewer moments of asking whether cheese counts as protein if eaten standing up.

And tomorrow, or possibly Monday because civilisation has rules, I will begin again.

That, I think, is the trick. Not never wobbling. Not never overdoing it. Not living forever on salad, restraint and the haunted memory of pudding.

Just beginning again.

With humour.

With realistic trousers.

And with the knowledge that the Norwegian fjords may be behind me, but the consequences have apparently travelled home in my waistband.