I have several fat friends. One is depressed so she eats. One is upset all the time, so she eats. One is perpetually heart-broken, so she eats. One was called fat once, so he eats. One just eats for no reason.

I am surrounded sometimes by so much fat I worry that the floor will give way and we'll all be swallowed by a giant fat-induced sink-hole.

I have heard over the decades too, every excuse and explanation: "It's my thyroid," "it's my parents," "it's my lack of willpower," "it's hereditary," "it's an addiction," "it's not my fucking fault, okay?"

You are FAT, the lot of you. Not plump, not voluptuous or curvy, not plus size, or Big Man, certainly not Rubenesque. The rolls and folds and back-boobs and disappeared chins didn't magically pile on one morning. You didn't wake up wearing a fat suit. You are the fat suit and like a reptile, you shed it periodically and grow a newer, fatter one.

Stop eating crap. Period. It's that simple. Stop eating. Fat is a consequence of eating too much nutrient-poor crap and slurping too many chemically-coloured liquids. So just stop, would you?

Don't attack me! I'm not making you fat, you are. It bothers you that I single you out? You feel discriminated against by my words? Am I horrible, unfeeling, self-righteous and so politically incorrect I need to be shot or else medicated? Hell yeah, bring it on.

I am not fat. I CHOOSE not to be fat. I walk past the bright packaging and sparkling fizz, past the greasy trays and the quick fix drive-throughs. I could be fat like you. I could eat my feelings too and Lord knows, I have reasons enough to be so damn fat that in time I'd need a crane to lift me off the bed.

But I choose life instead, and the ability to climb over ledges, run through fields, hike through mountains. I will die one day too, but not because my heart gives up in protest. Not with my fat constipated arse spread over a too-small toilet seat.

See, I was at the beach one day some years ago, with one of my fat friends. I jumped over the foot-high ledge without thinking and spread my towel on the sand. I removed my bottle of water from the cooler-bag, also a book, my reading glasses and a sun-hat. I looked up. My fat friend was waddling her way to where the ledge disappeared into the sand. Then she slowly and cautiously picked her way back over the few small rocks. She finally reached me and it took a further couple of minutes of surveying and negotiating until she plonked, rolling back and forth several times before she'd settled. Fifteen minutes in total, her face bathed in sweat, her breathing laboured as though she'd just finished a triathlon.

It occurred to me then, how many things I take for granted: walking, running, climbing, jumping, sitting; these few examples only what came to mind from watching this particular scene play out.

And then I thought about how these things I take for granted are like minefields for fat people. One wrong step and BOOM, an explosion of flesh wobbling all over the ground, like those amorphous blobs kids play with and drop.

I spent the rest of that day talking it through with my fat friend. Again. She'd been skinny as a youngster see. Over the years, a marriage, a divorce, and slowly, fat began to appear. The muffin-top became a roll then a filled sack, hanging almost to her knees. The chin doubled, quadrupled then got lost altogether. Her once chiselled cheeks swelled and bulged as the fat moved in and systematically pushed eyes, mouth, nose, inward; making every facial feature appear small, insignificant in the great fat mass.

She promised again, she'd stop eating and drinking crap. I looked at the large bag of exotic-flavoured Doritos and the litre bottle of Coke. I looked at my own bottle of water. It wasn't going to happen, I understood. Her constant promises only momentary offerings forced out by guilt. Her fat wasn't going to do anything but multiply.

She died a few months after our day at the beach. A sudden heart-attack, sitting on the toilet. She'd just turned forty one. Half of her short life consumed by the fat; the rest of what should have been a long life, killed off by the fat. She was a good friend. She hurt me.