Fit for life?

I think I’m in love. With my gym (or is it Jim?). It’s taken a while but I finally screwed up the nerve to make the most of the gym membership I was given at Christmas (I know, I know some people have trained for and completed their first marathon in less time, and many of them are hobbling into work with their medals to prove it as we speak).

The reason I’ve been so loath to face the place is that because although my personal trainer and fitness coach Lee Janogly took me in hand last summer I lost a stone gained a waist and, with the help of the legendary $100 bra (see blog passim), began to feel and look a bit more like my younger self.

But over the winter things have taken a distinct slide south. I’m now finding the warm weather and the attendant pressure to bare arms, legs and every bump in between is a huge incentive to ditch the stodge and get on the old treadmill. It worked for me – but ever since the temperature dropped I’ve been living in my cream fake fur-collared Dot Cotton coat because it don’t half hide a multitude of sins.

Consequently, when the sun came out last week and Doughnut and I hit the heath together, both coatless for the first time in months, the contrast could not have been starker. I barrelled around like some kind of “ before” shot in a B lister’s fitness video and Doughnut looked as if he should be taken off forthwith to be fattened up by the RSPCA. I was quite relieved to get home without the pair of us being scouted for Channel 4’s Supersize Vs Super skinny on the spot.

But those days are gone. I now have a personal programme designed to get me back on track by July. Thanks to Jim, the slightly dreamy and ridiculously named gym instructor who apart from having abs of steel can lie convincingly when told a lady’s age and profess stunned surprise in a reassuringly convincing way, I am now trotting down to the gym three times a week, occasionally braving a t-shirt beneath my vintage and very forgiving Mickey Mouse sweatshirt and have already lost three pounds. And not in the vending machines!

So how long will this new found love continue? Place your bets here and let me know below how your fitness attempts are going – or have gone – this year… 

Posted by Amanda Blinkhorn