Sian Williams has urged dieters to stop persecuting themselves about what they should and should not eat and break the cycle of sugar binges and starvation.

The former BBC Breakfast presenter, who had a double mastectomy for breast cancer two years ago, said she had cut out multiple food groups before she was diagnosed in a bid to be healthier.

Sian said she had been put off diets by her mother’s self-denial but ended up restricting her food anyway and will soon front a show examining the effectiveness and cost of weight loss regimes.

Writing in the Radio Times, she said: “So having spent my life swearing never to go on a diet, I ended up on one, because I’d cut out so many food groups.

“Not in a bid to lose weight, but to try to be ‘healthier’. My husband? Well, I’ve just asked him what he had for lunch yesterday and he said ‘two doughnuts’, which just about sums up his attitude to healthy eating.

“I was all about green tea, vegetables and salmon – his diet seemed full of wine, meat and puddings. Guess who got cancer? Me.”

During her recovery, Sian said she asked her oncologist if she should change her diet again to prevent the cancer coming back.

“When he told me, ‘a glass of red wine isn’t going to make the cancer come back, Sian’, I could have hugged him.

“Moderation in all things and a little of what you fancy, he told me. We probably knew that already, but sometimes it takes a doctor in a white coat to say it for us to take it on board,” she wrote.

She added: “My gut feeling for 2017 is this: that we will stop persecuting ourselves about what we should and shouldn’t eat; we’ll stop living in hungry denial and we’ll stop pursuing the starve-sugar-starve cycle.

“This year will be all about eating for happiness, not just for weight loss.

“Let’s make it the year for good mood food.”

The Save Money: Good Health starts on January 5 on ITV at 8pm.

The latest issue of Radio Times is on sale now.