With Christmas now over it's time for one of the most painful parts of the festive period – the adverts for diets. Before we've even had time to poo out what was once a turkey we get shown images of people starving themselves to undo the damage caused by enjoying life for once.
If you start to cave into the pressure and think about joining a gym let me bring you some good news. Scientists say that thinking about exercising can make you stronger, tone your muscles, and delay or stop muscle atrophy.
This is great news. That means you don't have to actually get out of this arm chair, I can simply think about doing exercise. I tried thinking about it earlier but it was boring so I found it difficult. Darn it, why is it never easy to get in shape!?
But this is still worth it, because imagined gym is so much better than real gym. When I go to the gym in my mind there's no one else there. That's probably because it's so small, but that means the gym equipment in my mind doesn't have to be wiped down of other people's bum sweat.
And in my mind the gym there's no instructor looking like a ham in a vest making me feel bad about my body.
The scientists found this out by taking two sets of 'healthy individuals', setting their wrists in a cast and only one set were told to sit still for 11 minutes, five days a week, for four weeks, and 'perform mental imagery of strong muscle contractions,'. The ones who thought about the action had better muscle tone. That explains why I have better developed muscles in my right arm, I must be thinking on the right side more.
So there you have it, I can be in better shape in the New Year just by thinking. I'm going to be dynamite with the ladies. Especially as from now on I'm only going to be thinking about cleaning my teeth.