Nigella Lawson Despite impressing her millions of female admirers by seemingly ignoring constant references to her shapely figure, the 51-year-old admitted “greed always outweighs my vanity”. She also disclosed how being a parent was hard and that some of the demands of motherhood was “impossible”.
In an interview on Monday with Kirsty Young, the BBC presenter, she warned she did not want to be seen as “a poster girl of the well-padded woman” despite her apparent acceptance of her body shape.
“Any woman who says ‘I have never worried about my weight’, or, ‘I have never gone on a diet’, is lying,” she said.
“There are times when I want to lose weight. I suppose the difference is I don't want to be as thin. Greed always outweighs my vanity.
“If I decided to lose weight, I would be letting someone down.”
She added: “I think it's impossible to be a mother without feeling some pretty major sense of failure.
“Just because you have children doesn't mean you become a fantastic mother. I find many of the demands of motherhood impossible.
“So, for me, stirring something in the kitchen is one of the easiest things I can do.”
The “How To Be A Domestic Goddess” author also disclosed that she was “beyond embarrassment” over a series of pictures of her on Bondi Beach in Australia when she was a guest on the popular Masterchef television series.
Miss Lawson’s figure sparked discussion in April after shunning a revealing swimsuit for a visit, instead the so-called “burkini", the modesty-saving outfit designed for Muslim women.
Accompanied by the comedian Maria McErlane, who wore a skimpy bikini, Miss Lawson sported a black two-piece and peaked cap, leaving only her hands, feet and face showing.
Referring to the less-than flattering pictures of her in the black, full length swimsuit, she said it was because she was “sun-phobic” and bored of needing to reapply sun cream constantly.
“If you're being used as an example of someone looking fat and ugly on the beach no one feels good,” she said.
“It would have been a lot worse had I been in a bikini.”
Miss Lawson disclosed how she watched her mother, the heiress Vanessa Salmon, battle anorexia and bulimia.
This experience helped her develop an “emphatic belief that one doesn't deny oneself pleasure in food”.
But she admitted that after comfort eating, she “puffed up straight away, wearing vulnerabilities and weaknesses on the surface”.
In the interview she also repeats how fans of Lawson's cooking do not include her husband, the arts patron Charles Saatchi, with whom she shares a £12 million home in Chelsea, west London.
She admitted she did not mind how her 68-year-old husband famously prefers Weetabix and Dairylea to her cooking, which he once spat into the sink.