It's not just my music. It's because I'm so f***ing thin. I had the same voice when I was fat, but no one gave a shit then" - Amy Winehouse reveals the secret of her success.
Yes, people, we are still addicted to thin. The 35,000 diet books currently available on Amazon expose our insatiable appetite for the tricks of weight loss, old and new. Thin, writes Susie Orbach in her latest book, is our "visual Muzak"; it's there on billboards, in magazines, on music videos, reading the news, selling us toothpaste, breathing hungrily down our sensitive necks - we've become accustomed to thin. Not slim, not fit, not normal. But thin. We've swallowed the line that thin is the peak of achievement, success made flesh (or, to be more accurate, bone). Take Kelly Osbourne's recent comment - "Suddenly everyone likes me because I've lost 2st. Why? Was I a bitch before?" - or comedian Tina Fey, who reveals that she didn't find fame until her weight had plummeted from 10st 7lb to 8st 7lb. Cheryl Cole may be the rightful darling of the day, but her lip gloss appears to weigh more than she does. ("One day a week I eat whatever I like," she remarks from beneath all that buoyant hair, and you just know that she means she allows herself a cappuccino, not a full fry-up with extra sauté potatoes.) These things have become normal. Hands up who doesn't fancy having a go with Alli, the new diet pill that leaches fat out of your system like a squeegee mop? Hey, casual diarrhoea is a small price to pay for a smaller pair of jeans. Right?
As Orbach argues, body shape - a slim body, a contained shape - has come to define us, a constant hum droning away in the engine room of the female psyche. Even those of us who balk at the idiocy and banality of dieting, even we who disdain the methods, can't help but glory in actually losing weight. Just recently I lost a stone - and it felt like I'd achieved something truly great. Something important. Girlfriends congratulated me, as if I'd just hiked to the North Pole on my knees or discovered a cure for asthma. As if it mattered. All I'd done was slim down from a cosy 12 to a generous 10. It was so pathetic, I told myself. But ... but ... there's no denying that I loved it. How could I be so shallow? So crass and hypocritical? I look at my little girl Lily, now six, and I dearly hope she won't monitor, measure and gauge her body in the way I have always done ever since adolescence and my first tussle with the zipper on a pencil skirt. Will she hit the blues if she hits 10st? Will it all still matter in 20 years, or will we have found something more edifying to occupy the tracts of time between blossoming puberty and certain death?
If anything, the signs are that we may have hit a new low in our dieting obsession: a poll recently found that some women fear weight gain more than cancer, which is so tragic it makes me want to weep. Where next? Where else ... but up? Could it be that we've hit dirt and are ready to redeem ourselves? As Barbara Ellen wrote in this paper recently: "Maybe we are entering what may be termed a post-Fern era, where society has peaked, burnt itself out, criticising the female form ... In simple terms, where female fat is concerned, there is nowhere left to go." While Ellen argues that the spotlight has shifted to men and their weight, I have a different, more hopeful take. Once our heroines have reached sub-zero size, once we're shitting fat and eating shit, once we find ourselves at rock bottom, isn't this where a little perspective may just start to emerge?
At the cutting edge of what may loosely be described as diet culture, this is what appears to be happening. A sensory shift. A mood change.
Not seismic, but certain. Look, for example, at the Zoebots - those terrifying acolytes of US stylist Rachel Zoe, the ones we've become used to seeing on the paparazzi circuit, with their huge sunglasses and clattery clavicles. Don't they look oddly old-fashioned? Past their sell-by? Zoe herself seems suddenly grossly out of touch. When she revealed that sometimes she is so busy it gets to 7pm and she realises she's only eaten "a grapefruit and some coffee", I wanted to call up and say: "Haven't you heard the news? Don't you know that deprivation diets are so O-VER? Jeez, Rach, how could you be so 2006?"
"I lived on water, cayenne pepper and maple syrup for 14 days. It was tough; everyone was eating and I was dying ... After that I ate waffles, fried chicken, cheeseburgers, french fries, everything I could find. That was the best time of my life. I've gained 12lb" - Beyoncé Knowles
Even at the bleeding edge of style, you'll find signs of an attitude switch. The most acclaimed magazine launch of the year - Love, a new title from the Condé Nast stable edited by fashion's reigning monarch Katie Grand - has Beth Ditto as its first cover girl. That's Beth Ditto: 220lb and still smiling. Sure, it's a bit of a stunt. But it challenges us, us mag-reading mavens, to take off our fat goggles and see sense. Sense, such as the fact that women come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Sense, such as the recognition that the defining body shape of recent years (all boy bum and ribcage) is suspect and unsound.
Perhaps it's already sinking in. Adele, another curvy singer, is soon to appear in US Vogue, photographed by Annie Leibovitz; Michelle Obama's magnificent body adorned the cover of the March issue. Last month, by the way, a poll found that size-14 women are happiest with their looks, while size 6s are far more likely to dislike their bodies. Not that we're about to flump on the sofa and lay down the lard. Most of us, given the choice, still want the splendour of slim - it's just that it's beginning to sink in that a fad diet is no earthly way to go about it. We now know that, as Orbach says:
"Diet companies rely on a 95% recidivism rate, a figure that should be etched into every dieter's consciousness." We've read the news that serial dieters are more likely to end up heavier as a result of dieting. We're beginning to cotton on to the fact that the low-fat lifestyle advocated by the diet police for almost 30 years has succeeded only in feeding a rampant obesity, an issue New Scientist calls the "defining epidemic of our age".
We are, after all, more informed than ever about the biological processes which govern our weight. Since Atkins taught us all about ketosis and GI dished on glycaemic load, since Gary Taubes told us all about good fats and super-foods bounced into the lexicon, any woman with an interest in diets (that's half of us, and - just a wild guess here - all of you reading this) is more aware than ever about the inner workings of our metabolisms. We know what happens to calories in and calories out, we know how fat is deposited, how fat cells never die, how deprivation diets cause the body to hang on to fat, saving it up for a rainy day, we know, we know, we know. In fact, we know enough not to fall for the spiel. In place of a desperate devouring of the latest diet fad to come careening around the corner with a promise to jettison our love handles in a flash of grapefruit juice, instead of the hype and the hoopla, a new realism seems to be emerging. There's even a name for it, since names are vital in the weight-loss game: positive eating.
Don't yawn at the back there. It may not have the woo-hoo headline appeal of some of the more drastic diets that have hogged column inches and bookstore space in recent years. But it's settling in for the long haul.
Think of positive eating as the cousin of slow food. The more glamorous cousin, perhaps, who is equally grounded and realistic but really wants to look fabulous in a clingy cocktail dress. Positive eating disdains cutting food groups and ditching dinner. It wouldn't subsist on a thin cup of cabbage broth, its stomach growling at the dog. It hinges on eating well, not eating less - a message that is becoming increasingly popular in even the most fad-crazed societies. In the States, for instance, dieting is at an all-time low. According to market research firm NPD, which collects information about the nation's eating habits through 5,000 food diaries, the percentage of consumers who are on a diet is lower than at any time since information on dieting was first collected in 1985. At the peak in 1990, 39% of women and 29% of men were dieting. Today that number has dropped to 26% of women and 16% of men. The shift, reports NPD, "seems to have come from a change in mindset". Even the Calorie Control Council, which represents makers of commercial diet foods, notes that the percentage of people who are dieting has declined - to 29% in 2007 from 33% in 2004.
"While dieting for both women and men remain huge markets, they are not growing markets," says Harry Balzer, vice president of the NPD Group and author of the report Eating Patterns in America. "The desire to lose weight really was a 90s trend. Today consumers appear to be making healthier food choices... today healthy eating is more a matter of addition than subtraction." NPD's diarists report eating more organic foods and whole grains, together with more fibre, omega-3 fatty acids, functional foods, antioxidants and probiotics. Cynthia Sass, a New York dietician and spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association from 2001 to 2007, concurs with these findings, telling the New York Times that many of her clients are embracing positive eating after years of failed dieting: "They would much rather focus on what to eat instead of what not to eat," Sass says. "After decades of obsessing about fat, calories and carbs, many dieters have made the unorthodox decision to simply enjoy food again. That doesn't mean they're giving up on health or even weight loss. Instead, consumers and nutritionists say they are seeing a shift toward positive eating - shunning deprivation diets and instead focusing on adding healthful foods to their plates."
There's a similar story unfolding in the UK. In its February 2008 report, Mintel observed that "in a market driven by health and weight concerns, diet plans and products should be thriving. In reality, the market for slimming products is in decline and growth in the reduced-fat, calorie or sugar (RFCS) product market has slowed to virtually nil ... Are fad diets a thing of the past?" A follow-up report from October 2008 seems to have lighted upon the answer - a big fat Yes: "The definition of a 'diet'," it concluded, "has shifted as consumers shun dieting for more healthy eating regimes."
The news, then, is not a repudiation of weight loss, but a rejection of fad diets, those quick-fix, miracle-in-a-box, celebrity-endorsed cures which have so absorbed us of late. In Britain, sales of "slimming products" fell by a third
over the past five years to £79m in 2007; according to Mintel's research, last year fewer Britons embarked on a "diet plan" such as Atkins or GI. "Many people simply do not trust diets to deliver any more," it explains. "Attitudes to dieting have become more negative, with a higher proportion of consumers believing that they are hard to follow, confusing and maybe harmful." Is that some perspective I see there, inching over the horizon?
"My body's different. It has settled into what it is now. None of this different diets lark. I can't remember the last time I tried some new fad" - Kate Winslet on her current shape
While plenty of fairy folk in LA continue to beat their bodies into submission with drastic diets, egg-white smoothies and hyper-caffeine drinks, a growing number are beginning to speak up for ... normality. My own pet star at the moment is Christina Hendricks from Mad Men, a wickedly sensual size 12. "I feel sexy and I feel like a woman and I feel happy," she says. "And I don't feel like I'm constantly depriving myself or beating myself up, and I still feel beautiful. But all the same, I'm a woman, and do I want to lose 10lb? Absolutely, like everyone else does."
Certainly the Hollywood elite isn't about to give up the slims, but their methods of getting there look increasingly sane. There's nothing particularly kooky about Jennifer Lopez dropping her twin weight by training for the Malibu Triathlon (she lost 3st in 12 weeks). Or Gwyneth Paltrow's website Goop, which is full of rather gushy advice about good eating and exercise (I did her turkey meatballs the other night. Gwynnie's meatballs! I mean, how much less glitzy can you get? It's hardly the spirulina, bee pollen and obscure Amazonian berries you might expect from the queen of macrobiotics). And so it goes on. Emma Bunton's return to figure-happy form, 18 months after giving birth to Beau? Well, guess what? She didn't drink a daily tincture of magnolia bark and banana leaf, she didn't eat baby food from little glass jars, she didn't ... well, what did she do? "After having Beau I took my time with it - I didn't actually get back to my weight properly for a year because I did it really gradually ... It's got to be about balance, though, being healthy but not letting it rule your life.
I think [fad diets] are ridiculous because you honestly can't stick to them. As soon as you do go back, you're going to put all that weight back on. The fad diets never work. Ever."
No doubt Kate Winslet would agree. That honey-coloured triple-wow body of hers is apparently due to a Pilates DVD which she does at home, on the sitting-room floor, when she feels like it. I believe her. "I feel very strongly that curves are natural, womanly and real," she has said. "I shall continue to hope that women are able to believe in themselves for who they are inside, and not feel under such incredible pressure to be unnaturally thin. I have always been, and shall continue to be, honest when it comes to body/weight issues."
If positive eating and the rise of the anti-diet seem just too good to be true - well, only time will tell. Professor Andrew Hill, head of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Leeds Medical School, certainly sounds a note of caution: "I suspect the faddy stuff will just lurk in the background until someone comes up with the next big idea," he says. "There's a life cycle in the weight-loss industry. I guarantee that within the next five years, there'll be a new miracle-diet product, another way to keep people purchasing. A new generation of girls will always discover a culture that vilifies fat and worships thin."
Perhaps, he suggests, this more measured approach to weight loss is a matter of the discernment that comes with age - that Kate and I have simply worked our way through the diet options and discovered that none of them work. As Hill says: "It is the flexible dieting strategies that are more likely to succeed in the long term; rigid restraint is always more likely to fail. But you have to try it to understand that." Fine, I'll buy that. It's just that plenty of other people, of all ages, seem to be buying it too.
"The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution" - Paul Cézanne
There are subtle signs that food - proper, nutritious food - is making a comeback at the nation's tables as more and more of us are cooking from scratch. Market analyst TNS found that Britons really are starting to eat more healthily, with a rise in the quantity of fruit and veg consumed (though, interestingly, only at the beginning of the week - still, it's a start). A poll for Tesco last month even found that we are eating more "foods we hate" in the hope of enjoying health benefits (spinach, oily fish and brown bread top the list - together with lentils, liver and Marmite, though not all in the same saucepan). I'm not saying we've all turned into Gillian McKeith, just that down-to-earth, common-sense nutrition is in the ascendant. Subsisting on acai berries and tree sap, or having a protein shake for lunch, or peeing on a stick to see if it goes pink just seem, well, a pretty bloody silly way of living a life.
I don't think for a minute that the diet wars have been won, that the dream of thin is going anywhere any time soon. Hospitals are still struggling with a rise in eating disorders; more and more people are having their stomachs stapled; Alli will probably sell a shedload in its first month. There will always be extremes, and extremists. But here in the middle ground, there is clearly an alternative way of thinking which is gaining traction, one which champions gradual, achievable changes - behavioural, emotional, physical - seasoned with a bit of moderation and a whole lot of sense. "None of which," says Dr Luisa Dillner of the British Medical Journal Group, "would make a bestselling diet book."
Wrong, Dr Dillner, wrong. As you might expect, there is a chart-topping book to tap this trend. Esther Blum's Secrets of Gorgeous promises to "break the bonds of diet despotism"; it counsels readers to eat fat, drink booze, indulge and enjoy a high old time while losing weight through a combination of sound nutrition and exercise. No magic bullet, and hardly rocket science, but a soaraway success nonetheless. Even the strait-laced American Dietetic Association calls it a "lusty, sensual diet book". But the point is, it's not really a diet book at all.
Nor, to declare an interest, is my own book, 101 Things to do Before You Diet - soon to join those 35,000 diet books on Amazon. It's more a live-it than a diet, a comprehensive (and hopefully uplifting) audit of the myriad things which affect our body shape - not just fats and carbs, but stress, hormones, sleep, knickers, hunger, sugar cycles, sex, fizzy drinks, fat friends, habits, trans fats, happiness, posture, opaque tights, confidence, chocolate - a full 360-degree take on our obsession with weight and its conquest. It's 100% fadless - and yes, it's how I lost the stone that I might have mentioned above. In short, and in common with the anti-diet new mood, it examines all the positive elements that will help you look fabulous in a bikini. Because that, after all, is what we're after. It may not be all that noble. But (with sincere apologies to Lily) it's true.