Louise Dean is dreading the day the first of her friends announces she's pregnant.

"Whenever a group of us goes out, the conversation is all about "when we have children", and "Would you prefer a boy or a girl?"' she says. "I try not to show how upset I feel."

Louise will never be able to have a child of her own. Last February Louise, then 28, underwent a hysterectomy.

She had cervical cancer and although the disease is very rare at her age - fewer than 200 women under 30 are diagnosed in the UK every year - it could easily have been prevented by regular screening.

As Ellen Lang, a nurse at the charity Cancerbackup, explains: "Many young women see contraception as a priority over sexual health. They find the smear test unpleasant and so continue to put it off.

"But it's desperately important to attend every smear as most abnormalities in cervical cells are treatable if caught early."

I am a 40-year-old working mother with a busy and, at times, haphazard routine. I am also obese, at 13st 9lb, yet in my 20s I was 9st. I find it difficult to manage what to eat and when. I'm satisfied with cereal and a banana for breakfast, but by 12.30pm I'm ravenous and could eat a cow. On a bad day I consume 3,000 calories and on a good day it's 1,800 to 2,000. I thinkmy big appetite is genetic because my aunt and mother were slim in their 20s, but obese by 35. Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Your family's eating habits could be partly to blame. Habits such as comfort eating can be passed down from one generation to another. So it's not so much a genetic thing that you can't do anything about, more that there is a familial tendency.

In early December, he had gone into hospital for a last ditch attempt to deal with his weight problem.

He was morbidly obese, weighing more than 23st, and had an advanced case of type 2 diabetes. Every day he had to inject himself four times with a huge dose of insulin.

The operation, known as a gastric bypass, involves drastic replumbing. The surgeon reduces the size of your stomach and then creates a bypass.

This means food avoids the rest of your stomach and a portion of your small intestine, entering the guts lower down. Not only do you end up eating far less, but you also absorb fewer calories.

The weight loss effect is not expected to kick in for a few weeks, but the day after the operation something remarkable had happened to Martin.

"I needed only 15 units of insulin instead of 130 to control my blood sugar levels," says the father-of-three from London. "I could hardly believe it.