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Get back on track or go off the rails

Miles Skinner
28/ 3/2007

LIKE a round cowboy who ate too much buffalo and bounced out of his canvas fridge when it rode over a stone, I have fallen off the wagon.

Two months and eight days into a self-enforced trail to the frontiers of health and filling less skin, I have spent a fortnight in the smoke-hazed bordello of gluttony.

All the regulars remembered my name and my outsized nose-bag was still behind the bar.

I am finding it very difficult to get back into the saddle.

I blame my age.

In the very recent past I have seldom erred from my low-carb diet, ingested any number of revolting protein shakes and guzzled a modest whale's-worth of fish oils.

The receptionists at the gym (Didsbury Virgin Active) are more familiar to me than the bakery staff, and I have foregone the pleasure of extended liquid lunches at the pub on Sunday to instead wind down the week with two-hour karate sessions ( http://bushinkaiacademy.mysite.orange.co.uk).

I've shed over two stone, but I'll still squash my laurels if I rest on them.

"Your body could probably benefit from a week off," said my Virgin Active personal trainer Sean Keefe.

"It's your 30th birthday this week. You need to gobble an ox and smoke like a beagle," I heard.

Which is what I did.

The resultant episode when I returned for a training session was the stuff of nightmares.

I always thought Rick Waller was just being lazy when he claimed he could not make his enormous bulk get from A to B any faster than a house brick.

But like the Celebrity Fit Club crybaby, I gave up after 40 minutes to avoid launching a stampede of gluttonised cattle over more diligent gym members.

I was left a wreck, as the long-suffering Sean fetched me a glass of sugary water and tut-tuttingly reminded me that smoking is silly.

Back for my back-up hypnosis.

I wonder if I really gave it a chance.

I do remember thinking, even during the cessation session -'yes - but I bet I smoke at my party'.

Time to stop crying...if I want to.