With every summer holiday from work comes the urge to ‘get fit and lose weight’ and with that, the opportunity arises to return to the local gym. Now don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of a gym….a place where you can go and exercise, lose weight, share tips and tricks with other gym goers and seemingly enjoy yourself however things never quite go to plan.

Being an avid subscriber of Men’s Health (7 months of healthy reading thus far) the idea of fitness and weight loss is sold to you as an easily achievable goal, an all in one simple package. A healthy looking bloke stands their looking effortlessly muscular, “Eat a salad, visit a gym, exercise for 3 minutes and have ‘body builder abs’ guaranteed”. Real life however doesn’t seem to mirror this.

Sitting in my car I can see my little blue gym membership card peeping at me from underneath my iPod; every time I’ve sat in my car for the past few months I’ve known it’s there but I’ve managed to ignore it……until today! I adventured to the gym, inhaler in one hand bottle of water in the other with one thought on my mind, “Must make a poor attempt at getting fit”. Upon arrival at the gym I put my card in and wait…..the SmartCard reader begins to read my card, could it be that I am still active on the system??………….NO, I’m not! Despite paying my 30 quid a month I’m still deemed as inactive. I go to visit the desk and hand my card over to the man. I stand looking down at my feet, avoiding eye contact seems to delay hearing the inevitable bad news. Trying to break the awkward silence I jokingly say, “It’ll be a few months since that was last used….” he interjects almost instantly with, “365 days mate…..that’s exactly a year to the day since you last came here”.

With this horror in mind I went about my ‘reintroduction’ to the gym environment. I threw myself onto several machines; exercise bikes, treadmills and cross trainers all felt my wrath. I returned horrendously out of breath, sweaty and instantly regretting the fitness idea.

Jordan