It's T-minus 62 days, 4 hours and 32 minutes until my holiday.

It’s also T-minus 17 minutes and 42 seconds until my takeaway gets here, according to my fast food app.

So, as you can tell, the diet is going well.

I’ve got roughly two months before I hit the beach and unless I do something now it’s going to look like Godzilla Junior is on a mission to smash up some sandcastle cities.

I’ve been telling myself for the past three months: “Oh, I’ll start my diet tomorrow.”

Tomorrow then turned into the next day, next week, following month etc and now I’m worried I’ve left it too late.

So what were my options with only 60-odd days to go?

I could book myself in for a session of lipo, though I don’t think they’d accept the 42 quid in my account and a homemade, incredibly dry sponge cake (I was out of jam).

I could go on a Kardashian-esque crash diet and survive solely on the skins of kiwi fruit and babies’ tears (renowned for their weight-shifting properties).

But who am I kidding? No way could I survive on fruit or hand over a cake to someone else.

After much contemplation and several bags of Wotsits, I decided there was only one option available – Spanx.

So I tottered down to Debenhams and began sifting through the Lycra contraptions that would soon make my breathing very difficult.

I have to say, it was the first time I was excited about the prospect of having my ribs broken.

I chose a nude/skin tone garment hoping that, should someone catch a glimpse of it, would go unnoticed.

I should have realised that the colour of the piece was designed to complement a “normal” hue, not my paler-than-a-ghost, gingery hue.

Still, it did everything it was supposed to.

My physique was squished and squashed and I became curvy and proportioned as opposed to looking like I’d let the kids add layers of plasticine to the parts of my bodies with surface areas larger than Norwich.

Now, here’s a free beauty tip, ladies. Whether it’s a good one you will see in a second, but for now let’s just take it as gospel, as I did. ALWAYS buy Spanx a few sizes too small, then you will get the extra support.

“Logical,” I agreed as I happily took the advice from a friend who had recently convinced me to try replacing my mouthwash with cream soda because “it takes away the yellow colour”.

I decided to break in the Spanx and, despite feeling incredibly light-headed, probably because I’d squeezed a whole lotta Shell into something as wide as a fruit gum, I felt great.

I threw on a killer, red bodycon number and headed out with the dog, hoping to convince the neighbours I’d lost weight or married a surgeon.

I have to admit I was rocking a good catwalk strut, visibly attempting to flirt with a fellow dog walker that was clearly in awe at seeing Katy Perry here.

To look sexy picking up the dog mess I performed what was a rather robust bend. It suddenly felt very cold around my waist.

I watched his face in disgust as rolls of uncooked tummy dough seeped out.

I could have killed my mate – but to be fair, she was right about the cream soda thing. Still, Spanx for nothing!