Striding into school cheerleading practice, I waved my pom-poms in the air.
‘Let’s go, girls!’ I whooped.
It was 2000, I was 13, and after a year on the squad, I’d just been named captain.
Not bad for a kid who weighed 22st 12lb and was once told she was ‘too fat to cheerlead!’
I’d grown up big.
It’s just the way we are, I thought.
Mum was overweight.
And my maternal granny had been too, until she died when I was 10 from congestive heart failure.
She’d been just 47.
I started every day with sugary cereal, had a canteen
