WE ALL HAVE THE POWER TO CHANGE OUR BODIES. FORGET THE EXCUSES AND GO FOR IT

As children head back to school, teachers of an older era must glance twice at the physical shape of the young ones entering the doors this term.

With each passing year, obesity, insensitive to age, wraps its arms around our future generations, who have little knowledge of nutrition and health.

It is not just the children who have gained weight, but also the parents, who’ve spent the summer in Wexico, Ireland’s sunny south-east. Similar to their comrades in Mexico sipping tequila, the Wexicans have been drinking copious amounts of vino, eating processed sugary foods and exercising very little during the summer.

This story is not exclusive to Wexico but to many of Ireland’s towns, where people remember over-indulging a handful of times — but surely it couldn’t have affected your body that much?

BLAME

You try to justify your recent weight gain by placing the burden of blame elsewhere: “I would have trained, but …” ‘But’ — it’s a nasty little word. It allows us to lie to ourselves and to limit ourselves without knowing it. “I was going to go training but the traffic was heavy and I had a long day at work and I am a bit tired after my night out at the weekend …”

‘But’ is normally accompanied by its two dearest friends — ‘if only’ and ‘try’. “If only I had a nanny and a plush gym beside my holiday home, like Mrs Jones, I would have tried to stay in shape for the summer. Some people have all the luck!”

In life, we have either reasons or results, excuses or experiences, stories or successes. We either have what we want or we have airtight reasons why it was not even marginally possible to get it.

Too often I hear parents blame their children for lack of activity during the summer. Now it’s September, the start of a new term, and this year you say it’s going to be different.

Gyms around the country are bracing themselves for an influx of prodigal sons and daughters as they return from their holidays. They are greasing up the doors so long-lost members can slide in sideways and if they get stuck, they’ll blame the handbag. It’s never me!

The reality is that weight does not just creep up on you. You don’t suddenly wake up with an extra 20lb. It takes effort and conscious decision-making.

So now that you find yourself in this current position, what are you going to do differently? Stressful situations happen to everyone, but we all have a choice on how we deal with these things. Sales of comfort foods like crisps, chocolate, alcohol and fast food are hitting record highs at present and with it our obesity rates. The question is — are you contributing to this?

We are all, right now, living the life we choose. The choices we make are made daily, hourly, and moment by moment. Do we try something new, or stick to the tried and tested? Do we take a risk, seek the guidance of a personal trainer and venture into the weights room, or perform sprints outdoors, or do we stick with the masses in the classes?

Do we challenge ourselves to improve every workout, or do we play it safe and lift the same weights, performing the same exercises? The bottom line is do we pursue what we want, or do we do what’s comfortable?

For the most part, most people most often choose comfort — the familiar, the time-honoured, the well worn but well known. After a lifetime of choosing between comfort and risk, we are left with the life we currently have. And it was all with our own choosing.

I am often asked: Is it tough at the top staying healthy? Well from up here it’s lonely, but it looks very crowded at the bottom, with 48pc of the Irish population dangerously overweight.

George Bernard Shaw said: “People are always blaming circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.”

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