If your bra band feels like a tight belt round your ribs after every meal, your size isn't the problem. The band is.

It starts the moment you sit down to eat. A few mouthfuls in, the band tightens. By pudding it's biting under your bust and across your back, and you're leaning back in your chair trying to make room to breathe.

You push your fingers under the wire at the table when you think no one's looking. You undo your top button in the car home. When the bra finally comes off, there's a deep red groove right round your ribcage, sometimes with the dents of the hooks pressed into your skin.

And it's not only meals. It's bending to do up a shoe on the school run, sitting in the car, reaching into the boot at Tesco. The band is always there, squeezing, and you've started treating that as normal.

Every fix you've tried treats the band as too small. Go up a size. Let it out a hook. Buy a 'comfort' version with softer fabric. It's a reasonable guess. It's also the wrong one.

Go up a band size and the bra loosens, rides up your back and your bust drops, so you tighten the straps and they cut grooves into your shoulders. Let it out to the last hook and you're one meal away from it digging again, with nowhere left to go.

The 'soft' bras are still built the same way: a narrow strip of band, a row of hooks and a wire.

None of these fixes change the design that's squeezing you. They just move the pain somewhere else.

Here's what nobody tells you at the fitting. In an ordinary bra, that thin band carries nearly all the weight of your bust. The straps are thin, the sides are skimpy, so the band has to clamp tight to hold everything up.

A narrow band clamping tight acts exactly like a belt. All that pressure lands on one thin line round your ribs. When you eat, your ribs and stomach expand, and that line has nowhere to give. The rigid hooks at the back make it worse, a solid strip that won't flex when you breathe.

It's not your body that's wrong. The squeeze comes from a band too narrow and too rigid for the job it's been given.

Fix that, and you fix the grooves, the gasping and the rolls together.

The ShapeChic Original Bra is built the other way round. It has one wide, smooth back panel in soft stretching fabric instead of a thin strip. The pressure spreads over a broad area, so there's no single line biting into your ribs, and it stretches with you when you breathe in or finish a meal.

It has no hooks and no clasps. You pull it on over your head like a vest, so there's no rigid strip at the back to dig dents into your skin.

The band doesn't have to do the work on its own. Wide cushioned straps spread the weight across your shoulders, full sides gather the spill under your arms, and wire-free lace cups lift without anything poking your ribs.

Every part shares the load, so the band can finally relax.

The first thing they notice is a deep breath. A proper one, all the way down, with nothing tightening back.

Then they get through a full meal without shifting in the chair. No fingers pushed under the band, no top button undone in the car. When it comes off, there's no red groove, no hook dents, just skin.

In the mirror, the wide back panel smooths over the rolls a narrow band used to create. The full sides tuck the spill away under the arms. With the lift from the cups, tops hang straight from the bust instead of clinging to every bulge, which can make you look up to two dress sizes smaller in the same fitted top.

It comes in sizes S to 4XL and seven colours, so it's made for the full-busted women ordinary bras squeeze hardest.

Picture the next family meal. You sit back in your chair, not to make room to breathe, but because you're comfortable. You say yes to pudding. You laugh properly, a full belly laugh, and nothing grips your ribs.

You wear the fitted top you'd pushed to the back of the wardrobe, because there's no groove at the back and no spill at the sides. You stand taller because your bust is lifted and your shoulders aren't being dragged down by thin straps.

You stop counting the minutes until you can unhook it. You stop thinking about your bra at all. You just feel like yourself again.

Every bra with a narrow band and a row of hooks will squeeze the same way, whatever size you buy. Keep wearing them and the grooves, the gasping and the rush to unhook will keep coming back.

ShapeChic spreads the hold over one wide, soft, stretching panel, so you can breathe, eat and sit comfortably.

Right now it's Buy 1, Get 2 FREE, with free delivery, so you get three to rotate through the wash. Pick your size from S to 4XL and your colours, and if you're not happy, you've 30 days from delivery to send it back for a full refund.

The offer is limited and sizes are going fast.