HOW many of you have sparingly spread your toast with low-fat margarine this morning? Or splashed a careful dash of semi-skimmed milk into your breakfast cuppa? How many of you will interrupt the monotony of a dreary Wednesday workday with a choccie bar for elevenses - and then spend the rest of the day mentally beating yourself for that small indulgence.

How many of you, remembering the decadent takeaway pizza of the night before, will skip lunch today, thus subjecting your colleagues to the irksome drone of your rumbling tum which will noisily protest the deprivation for the rest of the afternoon? How many of you will automatically pluck a low-cal ready meal from the freezer tonight, and luxuriate in a sense of smugness during the five minutes while it cooks in the microwave?

And how many of you will end the day by making a mockery of your diligent abstinence with an impulsive late-night snack of buttery toasted cheese, or a few calorific-laden pints down the boozer? Will you go to sleep feeling that the day has been a dietary disappointment, an unfortunate lapse, and console yourself with the thought that tomorrow is another day, a fresh opportunity to redeem yourself and find personal salvation through a spot of starvation?

Sounds neurotic? Perhaps, but it's a way of life that's becoming increasingly commonplace. I bet that quite a few of you recognise yourselves in the above examples because ever-increasing numbers of us are preoccupied with our weight, and are engaged in an ongoing scrutiny of our waistlines. We may not be following strictly regulated diets or attending slimming classes, but we do ''watch what we eat''.

We are certainly not obsessive, but we often casually check out the calorie content on food packaging. We consider ourselves to be well-adjusted but, while our occasional pig-outs may not be followed by the traumatic self-induced vomiting of the bulimic, they do usually trigger pangs of regret. And thus we live our lives in a constant state of procrastination, dreamily imagining a time when we will attain a perfect weight - and perhaps, deluding ourselves that our lives, by extension, will then also be perfect.

Of course, we're not so stupid or so shallow as really to believe this, but still . . . there is a niggling expectation that the day when we are delighted with what we see on the bathroom scales will be the day we achieve true balance in our lives. Small wonder that we think this way. Are we not constantly offered examples that this is the case, that weight loss is equated with success? Jennifer Aniston apparently got her high-profile part in Friends because she diligently shed a few pounds and made herself suitably televisual, while media coverage suggests that part of the reason why Della Bovey won back her errant hubby, Grant, was because she ''slimmed down''.

The weight that Della Bovey lost during the period when her husband publicly dumped her is seen as some sort of fabulous achievement. How ironic that the same publications which enthuse over the new slimline Della ooze concern over ''gaunt'' Anthea Turner - who also lost weight after being given the elbow by Mr Bovey, a man who clearly has greater weight-reducing powers than a truckload of slimming products.

Today is apparently International No Diet Day. Such quirky celebrations abound and rarely impinge on our lives in any meaningful way, but this one gives pause for thought. Western society's growing obsession with dieting is, of course, obscene. Not only is constant dieting physically unhealthy it is also mentally damaging as the delight of achieving the desired weight is undermined by the stress of maintaining it.

Of course, it shouldn't be this way. We know that the key to maintaining a healthy body weight is simply sensible eating and regular exercise, but we are a convenience society in thrall to the quick-fix which is the premise of so many diets. On a rational level I deplore the anorexic-inducing, ''get thin and get happy'', images which we are surrounded by but I'm still sucked into the lifestyle ethos which the diet biz promotes. My fridge is a temple to what is known as ''good intention''; shelves crammed with fromage frais, a freezer packed with low-fat meals, a salad drawer bursting with exotic lettuce leaves.

I'm one of the many involuntary conscripts in the battle of the bulge, scorning the tyranny of the dieting industry while nursing a dread of being fat. A recent statistic shamed me. Apparently a survey in America revealed that 11% of parents questioned admitted that if they thought that their unborn child was predisposed to obesity they would have the foetus aborted. It is a sickening statistic but there is no point in dismissing it as another example of American extremeness. It is a sentiment which would probably be echoed in this country.

I once briefly shared the home of a beautiful, petite, and very slim girl who fretted constantly about her weight to the extent that she had placed a set of scales in the middle of her kitchen floor. Every morning her flat would ring with my curses as I tripped over the damned thing as I shuffled towards the kettle in the morning. But every time I moved the scales out of the way she would return them to their previous spot. Eventually, she explained that they were positioned on that precision kitchen tile as it was exactly midway between her fridge and her food cupboard. The scales served as a reminder and deterrent. I thought her behaviour was tragic but she was oblivious of my pity; she doubtless thought my dress size was tragic. Dieting is a modern disease which blights so many lives. I wonder if we'll ever find a cure?