She’s a size 26, the heaviest – and the happiest – she has ever been.

After years of feeling self-conscious about her weight, trolled mercilessly on social media and having tried every diet under the sun, Laura Adlington, 34, runner-up in 2020’s Great British Bake Off, is on a mission to help plus-size people gain body confidence and stamp out fat-shaming for good.

Since Bake Off, she has amassed nearly 350,000 followers on Instagram, has given up baking – “I lost my love for it after Bake Off” – but calls herself a ‘work in progress’ when asked about her own body confidence and relationship with food.

“Secret eating for me was – and actually still is – an issue. Because I was told that certain things were bad and that I wasn’t allowed them, I used to hide them away.

“Even now I still have a little secret stash. I do feel like I’ve got to a much healthier, better place now with my kind of disordered eating, but I still struggle with cravings and binge eating.”

Despite this, the plus-size fashionista and former digital manager, whose bold Instagram posts show off her voluptuous curves and fashion finds, says she is the heaviest she’s ever been – and the happiest. She hasn’t weighed herself for more than a year and says she will never go on a diet again.

“I want to focus more on my health and eating more nutritious food, but no diets for me.”

What has made her so happy?

“I think it’s rejecting the weight of other people’s opinions and saying, ‘You know, what? I am who I am. I’m perfectly good enough’ and not bowing down to the diet culture or beauty standards that make us feel anything but. I just feel a lot more free now.

“I don’t feel like I have to restrict myself or go on a fad diet or starve myself to be a different person and a better version. Maybe it’s an age thing as well, but I just feel really content with my life and my husband (Matt) and my dog and my house and what I’m doing and I’m hopefully helping people, giving confidence and empowering women to feel better about themselves. That’s a really lovely feeling.”

Adlington, who lives in Kent, has an award-winning podcast Go Love Yourself with her best friend Lauren Smith, focusing on body positivity, a thriving social media following and has now brought out her first book, Diet Starts Monday, part-memoir, part advice manual to help build inner confidence and fight fat phobia, offering self-empowerment tasks at the end of every chapter in her quest to remove society’s obsession with ‘fixing’ fatness.

Adlington was only eight when she started her first diet and developed what she calls ‘disordered habits’. She would stash sweets, chocolates and crisps in her bedroom and gorge on them when no-one was looking.

She was badly bullied at school, she recalls. On her last day of primary school, as classmates were signing each other’s T-shirts, one child wrote the word FAT in capital letters across her back in permanent marker.

“For a long time, I felt like my life would start when I was smaller,” she says now. “I was constantly in a diet-binge cycle, thinking that the next diet would be the one, that this is where my life would start.”

She recalls that she grew up in a household that was consumed by looks, appearances and diet culture, which had an impact on her. While she stresses that she comes from a very loving family, they were concerned about her size.

“I was very defined by my body, and the conversations about what I looked like and what I was eating were rife in my household.”

She’d squirrel away chocolate and crisps to her bedroom which gave her ‘unparalleled joy’ and food was like a drug, she remembers.

Despite being much happier about her size now, she reflects: “I think it would be it’d be wrong for me to say that I’m magically cured. I don’t want my book to be preachy. I’m a work in progress as well. I still have bad days, but my good days massively outweigh the bad.”

She has come a long way since Bake Off in fighting fat phobia, but says it’s a hefty mountain to climb.

“There is this narrative that fat people are lazy and slovenly and stupid. We need to dispel that myth. Obesity or being fat or whatever, is not a choice. There are so many factors at play (such as) hormonal or socio-economic reasons. I think some people are just meant to be bigger.”

She’s grateful that the fame she achieved through Bake Off has given her a platform to promote body confidence and also boosted her own self esteem.

“Bake Off has really given me confidence and validated me to make me see that I am ok just as I am.”

Thousands of kindred spirits have messaged her saying it is heartening to see a plus-size woman comfortable around food and fashion. She still receives messages from women telling her they have worn a bikini on holiday because of the confidence she has given them.

But she still gets trolled on a daily basis, she reveals.

“You have to just ignore it. I’m not saying it all bounces off because some of it does go in. People don’t realise there’s a human person with a beating heart behind that screen, but the good definitely outweighs the bad.”

She considered bariatric surgery when she and her husband Matt wanted to start a family, but decided it wasn’t the answer for her.

“I thought that bariatric surgery was the only option to help me have a baby to lose a significant amount of weight,” she reflects, but concluded that the surgery “might staple my stomach but it wasn’t going to fix my brain and my disordered relationship with food and with eating.”

One of the points she raises in the book is the assumption that all fat people are unfit.

“I know plenty of people that are smaller, very unfit, very unhealthy. And I know plenty of people that are size 16 and they’re marathon runners. I’m not saying that everyone who is bigger is fit and healthy. I’m not saying that everyone who’s smaller is, it’s nuanced.”

Her biggest challenge, she says, is silencing the critics who accuse her of promoting obesity.

“That hurts more than people making comments about my appearance because it isn’t true. One of the misconceptions about my messaging is that it’s promoting obesity or saying, you know, it’s fine, eat what you want, and sit on the sofa and do nothing all day. I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying you should live the healthiest life as you possibly can. But you don’t need to be a slave to the scales. It’s about living a full life as you are.”

She admits that she would like to be slimmer.

“It would be remiss of me to say ‘No’, but I don’t want to go on a fad diet or have bariatric surgery to do that. So I’m perfectly happy with how I am. But I do think life would be somewhat easier – buying clothes, public transport, not having judgment from other people.”

Her message, she says, is: “You can make healthy changes if you want to, but please don’t be a slave to diets or diet culture for the rest of your life.”

Diet Starts Monday by Laura Adlington is published by Welbeck, priced £20. Available now