The personal attacks come off the back of a magazine article about her children's battle with weight.

She's a onetime weight loss ambassador, TV host, and radio personality, and now Chrissie Swan has turned cover girl.

The devoted mum posed with her boys in a shoot that has since backfired into an online annihilation.

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Neighbours actor Ashleigh Brewer blasted Chrissie over her children’s weight, tweeting that Swan was responsible for three-year-old Leo needing a diet. Owen from Adelaide weighed in, as did Cranky of Hobart and Sharon from Melbourne.

A shattered Swan told her listeners this morning “we're all doing our best. I'm doing my best with Leo, I am doing my best with Kit. They are gorgeous, Leo is a bit heavy, and I am looking into that.”

Swan admits her preschooler is seven kilos overweight, which she says is from eating too much of the healthy food like fruit. Now with the help of a dietician, Leo is eating smaller portions.

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“She's trying really hard, she's really trying to do the right thing and there's so many different factors to do with it. It can be emotional, it can be nutrients. My heart breaks for her because she obviously cares and really does want to do the right thing,” mum Marguerite Louis said.

Swan is mum to four-year-old Amelie. She says she can't imagine what it’s like to have a nation sitting in judgement.

“Mums are struggling, so it’s a pity when there is judgement. The cliché is the toddler in the pusher that’s having coca cola – and mums are pretty judgemental, so I think you do your best,” she said.

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Professor Zimmit is a leading authority and government advisor on diabetes and obesity and claims both nature and nurture play a part in obesity.

“It’s very hurtful and it’s very easy to blame the parents - it happens all the time. This is a whole community game, it’s the Government, it’s the community and the parents all have to contribute,” Professor Zimmit said.

“It is very much a combination of a genetic hereditary interaction with the environment, or you'd call it nurture. But we have to take into account now that we’re living in an ‘obesigenic environment’, that there are a lot of things around us which are driving us more towards an obesity situation.

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“We were far too quick to point the finger, and we have to understand that obesity is a very complex disorder involving hereditary factors and the environment - there is no simple one explanation of how to stop it,” Professor Zimmit explained.

Swan says she's tried to ignore the online persecution of her family, tweeting that such ugliness doesn't fit into her wonderful life.

Health sociologist Dr Samantha Thomas is appalled at the online blame game.

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“I think it’s absolutely disgraceful and it just shows how ridiculous our attitudes towards weight and health have become in Australia today,” she said.

With 60 per cent of adults and one in four children overweight or obese in Australia, experts believe modern life and urban planning play a big part.

“There are many more motor cars around and in certain suburbs - low income suburbs - the lack of parks where children can play. Bad urban planning in general in some suburbs where we don’t even have footpaths, so there is no way that people can safely exercise,” Professor Zimmit said.

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With Swan's legion of fans tweeting their support the star is refusing to apologise for who she is. She's not perfect - but she is perfectly normal.

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