I was voted best-looking kid in high school but, as you can see, things changed. I used to say I was a 260 pound Woody Allen. You can make that 295 pound now.
When I used to teach yoga in Bangalore and Mumbai, I noticed many clients struggling to cope with their weight. During some days, they would come in with plans to work out harder than usual because of events they'd have to attend later that week. The insecurity of appearance is something everyone goes through... even I.
I arrived in Hollywood twenty pounds overweight and as strong as an ox.
I always had a weight issue since I was a young kid.
I worry I look posh and fat. I can't do anything about posh - I'm accentless - but I've spent 20 years battling my weight.
It will not surprise you to learn that it is not uncommon for jockeys who struggle with their weight to starve themselves and spend hours in the sauna to lose a few pounds to be able to make a big-race ride.
Like most severely overweight people, I had to hit a rock-hard bottom before I'd take responsibility for the consequences of neglecting my own health.
At my heaviest, I was 5'8" and 175 pounds. I ate well, but in too large quantities, and I rarely made a concerted effort to burn off the extra calories. I'd beat myself up about being overweight, even though I had the tools to be in shape. Then I'd resort to an unhealthy diet to lose the weight that was making me self-conscious.
When I got pregnant with my second son, I still hadn't lost weight from the first, and since I came from a long line of overweight people, I was terrified that I was quickly going to become one of them.
For all of my life it was the size of my rear that caused me the most hand-wringing, but in this nearly-50 zone it is my stomach that is the problem. It seems to have broken free from its moorings and there is no knowing how far it will roam.
My weight has always been a struggle for me.
I cannot make 135 pounds healthily.
The first half of the 2014-15 season was a disaster for me in relation to my weight.
I've always tried very hard to gain weight since I was very young.
When I graduated, I was my biggest ever: 15 stone, with a boyfriend - my first - of just 11 stone. I was 23 years old. It wasn't just affecting my career: it was a health issue as well.
I was heavy as a kid. I mean, I kind of got it together for a while there in my 20s and early 30s.
It's hard for me to put on weight.
Weight is something I've battled all my life.
My weight has fluctuated my whole life, and because I've been on television since I was 11 years old, everyone has seen it.
When I'm at the greatest odds with my body, it's usually because I feel my body's betraying me, whether that's been in the past, struggling with my weight and feeling that I couldn't eat what I wanted to eat, or that I couldn't get my body to do what I wanted it to do.
Diets are for those who are thick and tired of it.
The hardest exercise for most of us fat people is that one where we push our chairback from the dinner table.
There were days I could barely struggle into a size 46 or 48, months of larges and XXLs, and endless rounds of leggings with the elastic at the waist stretched to its limit and beyond - topped with the fashion equivalent of a tea cozy. And always black, because I was in mourning for my slimmer self.
Growing up the way I grew up, food was scarce. So when you had an opportunity to eat, you ate. When I graduated from high school and went to college, I weighed 160 pounds. So, I knew I had to put on the weight. I ate everything from fried food to fried chicken wings. When I came to Green Bay, I did the same thing because I was 172 pounds.
At drama school, I was told, 'Lay off the chips, or you'll never play Juliet.' Sometimes, in the stock room of the set of 'Dinnerladies,' I'd put away three or four Mars bars while waiting for a scene. Then, at 24, I lost five stone.
