Treat your Fat Day to a spa manicure

I AM having a fat day. No, actually, wait: a fat week. It wasn't supposed to be here this soon, because the Weather Guru said we had rain and cold coming.

That meant I could still wear jerseys with skinny jeans – my flabby fat day wardrobe – for ages yet.

But the world hates me, so there was a hot day in the middle of nowhere. And I had nothing to put on. And because it's holidays and we stupidly live at the coast, I had a date with the beach and no choice in the matter. How do you tell people you can't go because you haven't shaved for a thousand centuries and last season's board shorts are now hot pants?

Fat people (and even people who think they're fat when they're not) go to the beach. Nobody says you can't sit on the sand unless you're a size six.

There are photos everywhere on Google of extremely chubby chickies spilling out of their one-pieces and not giving a toss what you think.

I'm not one of them. I mean, I do spill out of my one-piece (well, if I had one) and I do care what you think.

Heck, it doesn't seem to matter how old I get. I thought that by now I'd have fewer fat days and more "stuff it, I'm flaunting it" ones. But it's getting worse – instead of a passing panic in which I question my sanity and drown my disgust with mini doughnut balls from Woolies, I'm having longer and more painful sessions with my Fat Day syndrome.

I know I'm not alone ... I do know that.

If I was, it would be a sin to write about such a subjective, self-piteous topic when everybody else is slapping on their strappy vests and crisping their legs.

My (very pretty, very blonde, slim) friend had a Fat Day on Monday and so she told us about it on Facebook. She even posted a photo of herself a hundred or so years ago, when she looked as skinny as a swivel stick in her black, cleavage-embracing cozzie.

Everybody said "noooo!" and "you're beautiful!" and "you're SO not fat" and "if I looked like you at 40, I'd be grateful". That sort of soothing, jarring stuff that absolutely doesn't help at all.

In Fat Day state, you're mentally different for a while: everybody is a liar.

Especially your husband – and especially when he tells you how sexy you look, because of course you don't! You look fat! And it's all his fault anyway! And he can just shut up now and bring you a Lindt ball.

Can't stand days like these. It would help if we all had them together but the universe is a girl and, most times, a bitch.

On the morning that you wake up fat – so fat that you can't even look in the mirror – your best friend will have lost 600kg, found a new hairstylist, be wearing her boob-tube top on the school run and saying stuff like, "Wow! I never thought winter would end! Aren't you boiling in that tracksuit top?"

Blogger Melina Gerosa Bellows says there's no use fighting it. You have to be a hospitable hostess when Fat Days arrive.

Put them in a special pair of dark, tailored pants, treat them to stiletto heels and a blow-out at the salon, take them for drinks and snacks at the most expensive bar in town and disappear with them to a spa, where you'll remember that at least your feet and toenails aren't fat.

Maybe I'll just do that then.