Josie Long: ‘At 15, I was eating most of my meals at Orpington’s New World Noodle Bar’

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My parents were religious and going to church was a really big part of growing up in Orpington. I used to sing in a choir and be paid with a Mars Bar – 400 calories of pure sugar – and also I’d sneak off, in the middle of service, to a newsagent for sweets and curry-flavoured chip sticks. Then, when I was 10, me and my sister started going just up the road to a Lutheran church where the American pastor did socials with pot-luck dinners and would tell everyone to bring along a dip or dish. It was my first experience of a really incredible buffet.

Mum was into convenience food so she’d do us microwavable doner kebabs, or pasta with a thick cheese sauce with her signature detail of loads of tomato ketchup stirred in. I got well fat and I remember, when starting at grammar school, a teacher taking me into a cupboard and saying: “We like to talk to pupils with weight problems.” It was really harsh; excruciating.