Cold Shower, Anyone?

It's four days past the New Year, and how many times have I gone to the gym? None. Yep, that's a big fat ZERO. Why? I ask myself.

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Well, it was shut January 1st, so I have a good excuse for Thursday. Friday I was kind of busy doing domestic stuff. Saturday I felt a bit ill so I wimped out and today I went swimming instead, which has got to count as exercise, right?

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I say swimming, but I really didn't do all that much. Apparently there had been some sort of problem with the boiler the night before, which meant that the water in the pool was pretty damn chilly. I paddled around in it, with a half-frozen 5 year old hugging me round the neck, as she refused to strike out on her own. I went for a weight-bearing style of swimming, where you try to keep afloat despite having an extra body attached to you.

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Half an hour was enough. We headed for the showers, shuddering with cold, only to find that the showers weren't working at all. There wasn't even cold water coming out of them. Talk about adding insult to injury.

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Well, I was very virtuous, and I didn't finish off the half-consumed cocoa that my daughter left. I went for the sugar-free coffee instead. I picked up the Observer Sunday paper on the way home. There was an article in there about how worrying makes us fat. This comes as no real surprise because I know I lose a few pounds every time I have a bit of a holiday, and I also know that since I started the most stressful job in the universe 5 years ago I have put on half a stone a year.

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I'm not sure what the mechanism is that links stress to eating, but I know less stress has got to be part of the way forward for me. So, maybe, instead of resolving to get to the gym 200 times this year, I should promise to avoid stress as much as possible.

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That probably means avoiding getting hypothermia down at the leisure centre.