‘Away from Westminster, I have finally got on top of its unhealthy lifestyle’

I once swapped weight loss tips with Winston Churchill’s grandson. Nicholas Soames told me to have Müller yogurt for lunch and chicken or fish and vegetables for dinner. The now-retired MP bellowed this advice in his commanding style and amusingly pronounced Müller “Moolaar”. It was one of those moments in Parliament you think you might have imagined.

In the six years I have been in Westminster, I have never quite managed to get on top of its unhealthy lifestyle. Not for everyone: lots of people can be seen running through the voting lobbies in Lycra. 

But for me Westminster injects three or four days of living like a student into my working week – eating fast food at irregular hours with plans to exercise chipped away at by a sudden change of schedule or vote. The stress of knowing everything could be upended by a scandal or a national incident means my shoulders are knotted with tension, and my coping mechanisms are not healthy.   

When away from my family, I very quickly go to seed. I stay up late working, sitting at my desk into the small hours drinking coffee and eating crisps.

 If you were to look in the fridge in my London flat there is a bottle of white wine, which has been half drunk for over a year (let’s call it vinegar), and some old mayonnaise. 

It is no surprise, then, that for the last year, where Westminster has existed largely on Zoom, that my lifestyle has changed. 

I am healthier and frankly happier, and I look different. I really don’t want to be painted as a smug lockdown guru when many people have put on the so-called “lockdown half stone” – I’m anything but – but I have changed. When you are in the public eye, even if your fame has naff all to do with what you look like, your appearance becomes fair game. 

My weight, breasts, teeth and hair have all fallen foul. I have been told I have too much cleavage, which is “distracting”. I have been told that I shouldn’t dress in “sack-like clothing”. 

I receive emails with nuggets of advice such as: “Your chest was very flushed on the news today, you should consider putting some powder on next time.” When I appear on TV to talk about, say, the increasing domestic abuse in lockdown, the feedback I get is about my “greasy fringe”.

I am pretty certain that I made a good decision to dedicate my career to improving equalities and the role of women in public life.

I am not for one second asserting that this criticism drives my decisions, and I cannot blame a chorus of idiots for the fact that I, like most women, worry about the way I look. I have been unhealthily fat and dangerously thin. I have been on every yo-yo diet that has ever existed. 

I have weight-watched; I have aimed for a lighter life, which my husband referred to as “the eating dust phase”. I was practically married to Dr Atkins in the early 2000s. Since I was about 14, I haven’t been healthy or particularly fussed about my health – but I have cared what I looked like. 

No matter how feminist I am, I too have been groomed by society to think that the way I look is a sign of worth. I am not proud of feeling this way, but I do.

Anyone who has been on the latest fad diet will know that the single most annoying to hear is: “You just need to eat less and move more.” I have wanted to punch people who said this to me. 

But, much as I hate to admit it, in lockdown I have had time to do just this. For the first time since having a baby at 23, I’ve been able to cook food from scratch and consider what I want to eat. My idea of fun now is walking a mile and half to go to the nice greengrocers. 

Desperate for time out of the house, I started running. My husband, Tom, came with me at first, before doing his back in and stopping. To my surprise, I kept going. I found that I was able to make a space in my diary every evening to run. I still feel like I might die/vomit but I cannot bear to miss it. I simply do not recognise this as something I would think. Yet here I am.