OH Hello, there you are.
I suppose you are all feeling festive, you lucky things.
I’d like to join your merry band of seasonal elves but, unfortunately, my mood is being hampered by a shooting pain down the underside of my right arm.
Usually, I’d suspect a heart-attack and I would rightly have cause to, given that I made a spectacular comeback to my spinning class last night, but my heart is currently beating at a relatively normal pace.
I had been neglecting my health and fitness regime for the past month or so because I had fallen into a very comfortable hibernation.
This basically involved eating, sleeping, drinking, eating, lying on the couch, eating, eating and eating. Note the lack of exercise – this, I believe, was a key factor in my rapid and aggressive descent into a roly-poly ball of dough.
When mother remarked “I see you haven’t been spinning in a few weeks,” I knew it was time to get back on the bandwagon.
I duly turned up at spinning class, armed with nothing more than dread in the pit of my stomach. I had already decided to conduct an experiment, which would involve me counting the minutes before my head turned a very attractive shade of puce.
It took less than five. Had a doctor been on site, I’m almost positive he would have intervened on my behalf. Clearly, I am now just rambling but there is actually a link somewhere between Christmas and exercise – I’m sure I had it in the dark recesses of my mind before I started this.
Oh yes – I think I have it now, let’s just go with this and see what happens. (I understand this is terribly unprofessional, and I’m sure class 101 in the school of writing is ‘don’t let your reader actually realise you have absolutely no idea what you are doing’ – but I fly in the face of convention. Just stick with me, folks, we might all pull through this shambles together).
Forgetting the last paragraph and moving on … I wondered if anyone would notice if I just avoided going to the gym until after Christmas, but clearly, my inclination towards rapid weight gain meant this was not to be.
In my head – where a lot of things which are planned do not turn out as planned – I had hoped that perhaps, for once, my body would defy logic and I would actually lose weight while eating all around me and doing no exercise.
Yes, I envisaged that I would suddenly become some sort of medical marvel; I would defy all laws, and people would herald me as some sort of superhuman. “Look at this girl,” they would say.
“She has somehow managed to transform herself into a size eight by actually eating more and cutting out exercise. She is amazing.”
They would hold up before and after pictures of me and everyone would be incredibly awed at my transformation.
I’d probably make millions and become some sort of major celebrity figure, hanging out with other major celebs like Peter Andre and Michelle Heaton and the entire cast of Big Brother.
The Kardashian clan would no doubt turn to me for advice on how to maintain their slender shapes, and I would say: “Girls, what you have to do is eat more, exercise less and lay horizontal on the couch for a good portion of your day. Then, you too can look like me.”
This entire dream sequence was thought up by myself as a possible excuse for not going to the gymnasium.
I figured that if it worked, I would be well on my way to be a waif-like figure by Christmas.
Unfortunately, the gods conspired against me and, somewhere along the line, my experiment went wrong.
Shockingly, I began to gain weight rather than lose it. It quickly became clear that I was not a medical marvel.
And so, in a traumatic turn of events, I returned to spinning class.
Right, I think I’m just going to leave it there. Phew.