Flicking through magazines and watching TV, it’s easy to convince yourself that glamour, happiness, love and success are directly linked to thinness. And with magazines forever obsessing over the weight of the celebs du jour - be it Lindsey Lohan, or whoever, it’s no wonder that these unrealistic, enhanced body shapes can wreak havoc with our self image – if we let them.

The truth is those stick-thin frames, with their jutting hipbones, gaunt cheekbones and surgically enhanced breasts don’t come cheap. In reality, very few of us can look like that without an enormous amount of work and an entourage of professionals to train and tone, prepare meals, keep hair and makeup in place and, when all else fails, airbrush out any imperfections in photoshop.

Against this onslaught of misinformation, we have to fight the urge to make ourselves over in the image of the rich, famous and famished! Continuing to measure yourself against an inhuman ideal is an unproductive, self defeating waste of time. But you know that. But what you might not know is that…

• Women’s magazines contain 10.5 times more articles related to dieting and weight loss than men’s magazines.

• A study of Stanford undergraduates revealed 68% felt worse about their own looks after reading women’s magazines.

• The average size of the idealised woman as portrayed by models has become increasingly thinner, stabilising at 13-19% below physically expected weight.

• Girls are three times more likely than boys to say they feel badly about themselves and were more likely to believe that others see them in a negative light.

• Teenage girls rate magazines as the number one source of information regarding diet and health. Unfortunately over the last 20 years food, weight control and fitness articles and ads have increasingly attached a moral message…lack of control, laziness and self-indulgence, to their spiel.

So the next time you turn on The OC, or turn the pages of a magazine and sigh about why you can’t look more like whoever it is you’re envying at the moment, remember, you live in the real world – whereas she doesn’t!

Being thin does NOT automatically equal glamour and success. You can be glamorous whatever shape or size you are – it just takes a bit of work. And being successful is all about focusing on what you want and the qualities you need to get there. It’s things like kindness, creativity, generosity, brains and a sense of humour - that will get you where you want to go, not a 21 inch waist