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I have been battling with my body since I was 18. I've taken slimming pills, injections, diets galore, Weight Watchers and recently hypnotherapy. I realise that when I am slimmer (between 8-9 stone) I feel more confident, assertive, attractive and sexy. But it is slowly dawning on me that I can feel this way at anytime without losing weight. I am tired of this battle with my body - it's time for a truce.

I have been so conditioned over the years into believing that looking good means looking slim. It is taking me a long time to allow myself to believe that I am O.K. just the way I am. Recently a woman overhead my conversation concerning my body and told me she thought I had a beautiful body; I accepted her words gratefully but I knew I did not believe her. How deep is this wound I carry?

In trying to come to terms with my body I've thought about my childhood and how food was important and very enjoyable, nurturing, a part of our culture. I think food was an expression of love from my mother as it was from the very beginning when I was breastfed as a baby. My mother was manager of a London dressmaking company and must have believed that "thin is beautiful". Dresses always had to be altered to fit me, but I always looked smart and was very fashion conscious. Added to this, Twiggy was in vogue, so the fashion industry was to embark on a new era in its manipulation of the female body. I never felt manipulated. I was the one that was wrong and had to put my body right.

I know intellectually the reality of this argument, the powerful images we see on TV, in magazines. Have you ever seen a fat woman reading the news or anywhere else on TV (apart from comedy roles). The glossy women's press rarely have big women featured unless its one of those amazing stories of transformation after a diet - just confirming that it is possible, that we all can be thin and beautiful. Even the grossest women can do it! It seems that from point of view of the media fat women cannot be taken seriously, older women seem to have the same problem and probably for the same reasons.

According to Naomi Wolf dieting and thinness began to be female preoccupations when Western women received the vote around 1920. I can only surmise that this was the start of women being heard in society. The start of reforms and women in politics, in short women could be more powerful in public life it was also a time when women started to work outside of the home and this could well be the crux of it. Women were more visible. Inside their homes they could be whatever size they wanted but outside of that it became important for women to be a certain size, maybe to become whatever fashion dictated.

The health issue also is not what it seems. What is evident however is that being pre-occupied with our weight and dissatisfied with our bodies and ourselves means that we are disempowering ourselves, hating ourselves and our self esteem is suffering.

It is no easy task to shrug off the powerful images and messages that surround us to look thin but I am going to try. I know that I cannot go on having this battle with myself. Reading books like the Beauty Myth help to endorse my feelings. Naomi Wolfe writes: "A cultural fixation on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience. Women's dieting has become an obsession about female obedience." When I read these words I become angry as I realise the extent of my manipulation and belief.

I know I have to heal this wound within me to become the complete and powerful woman that I know I am.