WHILE hovering at the back door of the office, mentally rearranging my lunch plans thanks to one of those surprise monsoons we get here, I met a colleague returning from a run. He was glistening from the rain. Red from the wind. But entirely nonchalant, like Tom Cruise against a burning city, as he emerged from the apocalyptic weather. As I opted out of my stroll to Sainsbury’s with a dodgy brolly, two more colleagues slipped past in running gear. In shorts. “What the hell is wrong with these people? Don’t they see that the perfect excuse to stop is falling from the sky? You don’t have to exercise right now, guys…”

When hunger eventually trumped my desire to stay dry, I left the building. Walking a mile in the drizzle for a grotty pre-packed sandwich and a diet Irn-Bru seemed like a fair trade. I walked past the bus stop, with the advert we’d been discussing at work – not for its content but for the lovely typeface we were thinking about using. “OB-S- -Y is a cause of cancer.” The universe I trying to tell me something.

There are two types of exercisers: motivated exercisers and panic exercisers. Those who get up and do it, who fold it into their lives no matter what, and people like me who can subsist on a panic, personal guilt or shame for just long enough to feel like I’ve appeased the fickle gods of health and well-being before giving up. I cannot find a motivation more powerful than “Ugh, I better start looking after myself.” Try as I might, I just can’t make it stick.

That’s not to say that I do nothing. I cycle to work and into town. I manage my 10,000 steps most days, and thanks to yoga I can still grab my toes. But none of it makes me puff, sweat or feel like I’ve done anything that actually makes a difference. It’s just getting about or staying still in weird positions. Those who run every day, play squash weekly or cycle up hills at the weekend of their own volition are a mystery to me.

I’d like to imagine it’s all a ruse. Scenario 1: they come home, flop in front of Netflix and tear into a sharing bag of Doritos. Scenario 2: these people just have something extra, some mental virtue, some strength of character that I don’t.

I tell myself they’re like stock characters in a novel, capable of doing one really good thing and doing it beautifully, but ultimately boring to read. Whereas I’m the flawed protagonist, conflicted, capable of stretching towards virtue, but pulled in different directions by the complexities of my life. Except the complexities of my life are ice cream, Star Trek and idleness. And the complexities of theirs don’t become convenient excuses not to bother taking care of themselves.

I am a binge exerciser. All feast and famine. The guilt of making excuses catches up with me every couple of years and I throw myself headlong into a Serious Exercise Regime to assuage the guilt. When I’m doing it, I swot hard. I’ll train each day. Once I ran a 10K a week after having the flu, and I felt deliciously smug. “I’m one of you,” I thought to myself. “Look how fit I am. I am totally into exercising.” And as before, I quit.

I’ll have years where I throw myself into running or weight-lifting or swimming. I’ll run to and from work. I’ll swim thrice a week. I’ll feel like a machine, where everything works in perfect harmony. Lean. Strong. Capable. And then, I’ll stop. Not consciously, but gradually. I’ll glom onto an excuse one day. The rain. An ache. A poor night’s sleep, and before I know it I’m back to my leisurely baseline of just getting around without the car for another year, maybe two, until panic catches up with me again and I silence it with pizza.

A little and often is better, I know. My mum was testament to that. She and her friend would do three miles every night. As a teen, I would occasionally join them, but only really as a reminder to myself that I could do it so didn’t actually need to. I completely failed to grasp that a rangy 15-year-old who can run a few miles is nothing special. The trick to being able to do it when you’re more than twice that age is putting in the work. Four children later, I know it’s only a matter of time before I need to commit if I want it to stay this way.

Right now I can eat well all week and indulge all weekend, without any visible effect. My hair’s going grey, the fine lines are setting in as expected, but I’m not wearing my bad habits on the outside yet. Even so, my thirties so far have come with an unordered side of health panic whenever I tuck into my favourite things. Chips with salt and clogged arteries. Wine with a side of liver damage. The spectre of metabolic betrayal is lingering. I like to eat everything, but beer and chocolate are my weakness. I know I won’t be able to outmanoeuvre them forever. I’m at the age where I know people who’ve had cancer, who’ve had heart attacks, who’ve died suddenly. But try as I might, I can’t transubstantiate what I know about good health into the willpower needed to make long-term lifestyle changes. All of you who can just say no to the things you want, who put your health above your baser desires and make it stick, I salute you.

I suppose that’s what it comes down to really. The fear of change. The fear of doing less of the things that bring me instant pleasure and having to do something that is really bloody hard in service of a greater good. I know what I need to do, but instant gratification and greed are a hard habit to kick. I’m my own biggest hurdle to staying healthy. If any of you have figured out how to win this race, let me know.