I’ve done it. I’ve joined the gym. This isn’t the first time, of course. It’s not even the second.

You remember that awful film where Julie Roberts played the Runaway Bride?

That’s like me, only with treadmills. I run away from treadmills. When it comes to gym memberships, I’m a complete commitment-phobe.

I start off well, with good intentions. Then I realise I actually have to try, that just sitting on a static bike with a book open in front of me is not going to trim my thighs one inch.

It’s not enough just to put on your gym gear and walk around the house, no matter how righteous you feel. You actually have to go – and go for long periods of time, too.

It’s not that I’m lazy. It’s that I’m really, really lazy. Don’t get me wrong, I bike around town. I walk everywhere.

I don’t own a car – and frankly, living in the car-park that is central of Oxford – why would you want one?

But any enforced, and obvious attempt at exercise is generally treated by me to be the devil’s work of which I must take no part.

But this time I really mean business.

I’m not going to have another birthday where I feel unfit.

It’s not even that I’m particularly overweight (I’m probably not at all, really, despite spending most days feeling like a beached whale) but it’s a sense that I should, and easily could, be a lot healthier.

Plus, I don’t want to get dementia, or diabetes and all those other things that being overweight apparently causes. I know this is true – the Daily Mail said so.

My first date with the cross trainer went fine. I actually surprised myself. I swam actual lengths and even treated myself to a sauna afterwards.

Then I went home and – naturally – ate twice as much as usual because I’d earned it. What am I doing all this for if I can’t enjoy overindulgence, anyway?

I’m working on the premise that your muscles burn more fat and for longer after working them out. That’s true. But I don’t think it extends as far as peanut butter and Nutella on toast. Twice.

I’m going back again soon. I am. I promise. I have to – I’ve committed this time, in a way I’ve never committed before. You just watch me.

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