LIZ JONES Ive got a message to all those formerly obese women preening in front of the mirror after losing weight on Mounjaro

This is me, checking into a hotel. Never mind admiring the view from the balcony or perusing the room-service menu. My first task? I dim the lights, especially the ones in the bathroom.

If there are wall-to-wall mirrors, I swear to never look up (I did once; I was aghast at the inside of my elbows).

A mirror in the hallway? I sling a scarf over it, vampire fashion. A full-length mirror in the wardrobe? Again, avert eyes and rue the day I ever had laser eye surgery.

I do have a bathroom mirror in my home and one above a mantelpiece, but I never look in them.

I don’t even look out the window on a train as invariably there I am, my awful face reflected back, the spitting image of Captain Pugwash.

I’m in awe of anyone who can look objectively at their reflection without recoiling, screaming at the chasm between how you think you look to others… and the cold, hard reality.

You see these strange people everywhere, as unselfconscious as newborn babes – in gyms, cloakrooms and even (so brave!) trying on clothes in changing rooms, twisting to see how big their bum looks.

I’m not jealous of their ease; I just wonder how they cope with a reflection that isn’t perfect.

Now, apparently, there are even more of these preening peacocks, thanks to what is called the ‘Mounjaro Mirror Effect’: formerly obese women who suddenly have increased body confidence and self-love, which means they just can’t stop admiring their new silhouette, revelling in clothes shopping and taking endless selfies.

I don’t even look out the window on a train as invariably there I am, my awful face reflected back, the spitting image of Captain Pugwash, writes Liz Jones

It’s wonderful so many people feel happier about their appearance, as well as their health. But as someone who has always been thin, even dangerously, life-threateningly so – I became anorexic aged 11 and was sectioned in my 20s – I find it hard to understand anyone who thinks being slim is a reason to preen in front of a mirror. Just because you’re thin, it doesn’t mean you look good naked. I should know.

To anyone who thinks I’m too hard on myself, I will protest until the cows come home that I don’t have body dysmorphia: a distorted, inaccurate, self-deprecating vision of how one looks, as though seeing oneself at a funfair.

Because I know for a fact I’m hideous. I am a realist. I am not confident in any area of my life: I hate my voice, doubt my work, am even nervous walking my dog. I was born this way, sadly.

When readers email, ‘You looked great in that fashion shoot!’ I know they’re lying. You might say I look great in photos, but that is after hours in make-up, with great lighting. Even after my facelift, I could not bear to look at the result when the bandages came off.

So, a word of warning to anyone who thinks dropping a few dress sizes will make you feel more beautiful, happier, loved: it won’t.

So when did my spectrophobia or eisoptrophobia – a fear of your own reflection – begin?

I was five, about to start primary school, and I went into my parents’ bedroom, to my mother’s dressing table.

I loved opening her jar of face powder, dipping a finger into her Pond’s cold cream, sniffing her block of mascara. I caught sight of my profile in the triptych mirror and was horrified. I changed the angle of each mirror, studying what happened. My face resembled a spoon: flat, featureless. My mouth looked small, my eyes and ears too big.

Liz Jones pictured as a five-year-old when she says her spectrophobia or eisoptrophobia began

On my first day at school, I was so ashamed, I refused to let go of my mum’s hand. In the classroom, I made sure no one saw my profile. I dreaded PE, as I was convinced my knees were fat. I was excused from swimming: my mum wrote a note, saying I had an incurable verruca.

In secondary school, I refused to have a communal shower. Of course, this was the 1960s and 1970s, and no teacher thought to question why I would only get changed wriggling behind a towel, or refused to eat lunch.

Crucially, my mum, busy with seven children, never noticed I was different, diffident. My dad only told me I looked ‘lovely’ on his death bed; by then it was too late.

So, rather than the expensive last resort of fat jabs, I would suggest that being brought up in a nurturing, loving household where you are told you are beautiful, every day, is the best way to ensure you never feel judged by a mirror.

I had naively thought that in my 60s I might relax and think: ‘OK, I’m not after a man any more.’

Whereas my mum had no teeth in her 40s, never once drank water, nor exercised – and never gave it a second thought – these days we are all pressured into looking hot into our dotage.

You might wonder how I apply make-up. I use a small magnifying mirror, only peering at a small section of my face at a time.

So I admire people who are unafraid of their reflection, who revel in it; dear God, I don’t even own a single framed photo of my wedding day.

The most famous example of someone comfortable with her reflection is the late Queen Elizabeth. Her couturier, Stewart Parvin, told me how she ‘had plenty of mirrors, so that she could see what’s going on. She would stand, in her slip and stockings, in front of a full-length mirror, and had reached a stage where she was comfortable with who she was.

‘The Queen looked squarely in the mirror and she liked what she saw. She didn’t see anything other than something fantastic.’

Unlike the late Queen, I know I’m anything but fantastic. And I don’t need reminding of that fact.