How many times have you started the new year with a resolution that this will be the year that you become your healthiest, lightest, fittest?

Thought so!

I’m the same. Every year since I can remember, I start the year really healthy and gradually things slip back into the same old pattern. Until after Easter, and then I start again, in a bid to get beach ready. Then summer holidays happen and September comes around – the start of a new school year (a kind of second new year to me). I promise myself to be “good” until party season (most of my family birthdays fall in the space of a month – just before Christmas!) Then comes the Christmas indulgence and the whole cycle starts again. Sound familiar to anyone?

Not that I am especially unfit or very overweight, but I’m in my forties now and I can’t get away with things like I used to and my weight has crept up and will continue to do so unless I take action. I’m a bit squidgy round the edges (to quote Notting Hill).

2020 has most definitely not helped matters either. The glasses of wine have started earlier and become more frequent (well I don’t need to drive anywhere), and the nibbles and takeaways have become a bit too regular because, well, why not when you can’t go out anywhere? But it has become a habit, and hitting my heaviest weight since I was pregnant 9 years ago has been a wake up call. My clothes don’t fit right and I’m not rich enough to splurge on a whole new wardrobe, so I have had to take another approach.

So, in November I did something I have always wanted to do but it never seemed the right time. I signed up to become a personal trainer!!! If you think that I am one of those fitness fanatics that spends every waking hour in the gym…wrong (my opening statement might have given you a clue). I do go running though and like to swim so I have a decent level of fitness, but not a personal trainer level of fitness. I love wine and pizza, my tummy will never be quite what it was, I have a dodgy ankle and can’t really pull off a squat without losing my balance. I am a member of a gym but only really go swimming..although I did try Pilates a few times but the fierce instructor scared me off.

I am also a mum of 2 children, aged 12 and 9, and part-time “stepmum” to a 7 year old. I work full time and I barely find time to think, so maybe it’s crazy to add to the chaos and take on training for a personal training diploma. But if 2020 has taught me anything, it is that life is for living, and I am so sick of spending hours at my kitchen table on zoom call meetings. Sometimes I barely hit 1000 steps (it’s only 4 steps to the kettle!) – this certainly hasn’t helped my fitness. I’ve decided I don’t want to spend so much time on my backside; I want to do something with – literally – more get up and go! I also want to help the many many women like me who are juggling a million and one things and are finding it hard to find time to look after themselves, and stick at it. I know that work, school runs, mum’s taxi trips, and life in general gets in the way…it just does. I know it has to fit around your life. And I’m going to start with my own.

So here we go. One week into January and off we go…oh no, wait, we’re in national lockdown and the gyms have closed again. Aaarrgh! But it’s ok – I have some weights and a mat and I am making myself (and my foolishly willing boyfriend) a fitness programme that we can do at home, using the tips I have learnt so far. Lockdown, you are no barrier to me and my new motivation!

So, hopefully this year really WILL be the year I become my fittest and healthiest. And perhaps the year I manage to conquer a proper squat without falling over…

Wish me luck!