Myleene Klass has denied rumours that she was desperate to get back into shape immediately after giving birth to daughter Ava.

M&S model Myleene gained over 4 stone (nearly 60lbs) while pregnant but says she loved the experience: “I revelled in being pregnant. I loved raiding the cupboard and I loved my midnight cravings for spaghetti bolognese.”

“Once I sent [partner Graham Quinn] out for mincemeat at 11pm and he came back without any onions - it was the end of the world! No wonder I put on so much weight.”

“I got a kick out of getting the next size up - it meant the baby was growing.”

After Ava was born in August, Myleene appeared to spring back into shape again, but she attributes this to just a combination of breast-feeding and “clever dressing”: “I don’t know how much I’ve lost because I haven’t got any scales. I’m just going by my clothes.”

“I have been breast-feeding and it does help with the weight loss. I wobble in different places now but it’s just like wearing your war wounds, ‘Hell, this is what I’ve been through’.”

She said she thinks it’s “not physically possible” to go to the gym in the first six weeks after giving birth and it wouldn’t be sensible to start a “starvation diet”: “Ava needs me to be well. If I get ill, who’s going to look after my baby?”

“I just can’t do that. And I refuse to do that. I want to be a good role model. Not only to other women but first and foremost to my own daughter.

“If Ava grows up to read Mummy went on a mad watercress diet as soon as she was born it implies that there was something wrong with my body, that I wasn’t proud of what I had achieved.”