Boot Camp

Over the last few days I have been reading, with a growing sense of extreme sympathy, my housemate's account of having spent a few days at the New You Boot Camp.

Zara is a beauty writer, and thus she gets better freebies than I do (I'm a classical music writer). She gets free haircuts, more make up than she'll ever use, swanky spa treatments, Rapunzel-style hair extensions, and until now I've been quite envious. Not any more.

Zara has just spent a week somewhere that explicitly describes itself as a "military-style weight-loss camp" on a strictly-enforced diet, surrounded by other women who are also on a strictly-enforced diet. When I first heard that she was doing some sort of fitness camp I thought it sounded quite fun - I'm quite the fitness freak myself. But the more I've read her diary, the more horrified I've been.

Lots of exercise? Bring it on.
Healthy food? Yum.
Healthy food in very small portions? Hehe. That's funny. Where's the rest of my food?
5am starts? Eeeep...
No caffeine? WHAT???
5am starts with no caffeine? Oh HELL no!
Swimming in freezing cold water? I wanted my mummy just from reading about that.

It was the swimming in freezing cold water bit that made me realise that I was never, EVER doing ANYTHING like this, no matter how desperate I am to drop a dress size. It also made me wonder why on earth any woman would pay to have some burly guy in an army uniform yell at her and drag her out of bed at 5am to go for a dip in the North Sea in November. Was it perhaps some sort of self-punishment for not being thin? Over tea last night she told me: "I think a lot of it's to do with control. A lot of women have serious issues with food and exercise, and somewhere like this, all of the control is taken away from you. I think a lot of the women are paying for someone else to take responsibility as much as anything else."

Interesting.

Zara is now back from the camp and very much alive, although she doesn't look any thinner...but then again, she was very slim in the first place. I have gained a lot of respect for her, and also an appreciation of the fact that I get sent to concerts for work rather than boot camps.

So, you wanna lose weight?

We like the Oasis Sports Centre.

The Oasis Sports Centre is very close to my office, and a large number of my colleagues go there. After much nagging, I told them that I would join on one condition: If at any point during the induction process it was assumed that I was joining the gym for weight loss purposes, I would tell them to naff off.

I joined a gym for a while during my first year of college. As I was filling out all the forms, I was asked by my slimy new "personal trainer", "So, you wanna lose weight?" Ridiculous enough under normal circumstances, but particularly risible considering that having suffered from a chronic loss of appetite during my last year of school, I was actually trying to gain weight at the time. It's a fundamentally bad question to ask: if the woman in question is fat, it's insensitive. If she's not fat, then it's just plain stupid and she shouldn't be being encouraged to lose weight. I don't honestly know if they ask men the same question in the same way, but I suspect not. In any case, since men by and large are not so sensitive about their weight it wouldn't really matter so much if they did.

On Friday, I went along to Oasis and headed to the enquiries desk, ready for battle. I have to admit that part of me was quite looking forward to making a scene, but in the end I didn't have the opportunity to do so. There was a question on one of the forms asking me why I was joining the gym, one of the tick boxes being "weight loss", but that is an entirely reasonable question posed in an entirely reasonable manner. Other than that, it was just general medical stuff that they'd need to know. Overall, I'm pretty pleased so far.

My induction session is on Wednesday, and we have yet to discover what that will bring. Will my "personal trainer" give me diet tips? Will they pinch my imaginary rolls of flab? Will they give me specific exercises to do in order to make me thinner? Will I punch them? Watch this space!

The path to enlightenment...

My impending homelessness means that I've been looking on Moveflat a lot recently. I've decided I quite like the idea of living in a girls-only flat - I've got this idea in my head that it would just be like one big long sleepover, hanging around in shortie pyjamas, watching Clueless and talking about boys. However, the reality even of what the ads themselves look like is enough to scare me witless.

"Looking for a clean and tidy flatmate"
"Looking for someone clean and tidy"
"Must be clean and tidy"

I guess that wouldn't be me then. However, the other thing I've noticed about all these girls' ads is rather more sinister:

Flatshare interests: Cooking, gym, yoga
Flatshare interests: Fashion, reading, yoga
Flatshare interests: Yoga

What is it with the yoga? When Geri Halliwell shrunk to miniscule proportions a few years ago, advocating yoga has her secret without mentioning the fact that she had probably also been living on celery which might have had something to do with it, it seems as if most of the female population bitched about how skinny she was and how awful she looked whilst simultaneously signing up for as many yoga classes as they could fit into their lives. And judging by moveflat, this fad is not on the wane.

Maybe my knowledge of anatomy and metabolism isn't that hot, but where I come from, in order for exercise to have any benefits in terms of increasing fitness and burning calories, it has to raise your heart rate above resting level. I'm not saying that yoga isn't good for you. Of course increasing flexibility can't be a bad thing. But helping you lose weight? Not unless the thought of turning up at the gym with cellulite hanging out of your pink lycra yoga outfit terrifies you into giving up pork pies.

So, sitting in one position for hours will make you thin? Well, I spent a good two hours in the "Slob Position" watching Dancing on Ice last night, and it's most gratifying to know that I might have burned a few thousand calories whilst I was at it. I felt so at one with the universe whilst watching Kyran Bracken fall on his arse, so enlightened witnessing Philip Schofield's nauseating interview techniques ("So, did you EVER dream that you'd be here, in the final?" I always hope one of them says, "YES, actually I did think I'd make it to the final" but they never do).

I did do a yoga class once. It was in my first year of music college and it was the only extra-curricular activity available, so I jumped at the chance to try it out. I have to say, it was the most putridly dull hour of my life. Everyone else was talking about how relaxed and enlightened they were feeling afterwards - I was just wishing I'd gone to the pub instead, at least I would have got some exercise lifting my non-slimline G&T to my mouth. Perhaps it might have been more scintillating if they'd had TV screens showing Dancing on Ice

Girls, yoga will not make you thin. If you happen to have the superhuman attention span required to enjoy it, good for you. But if you want to lose weight, try running, or cycling, or swimming, or kickboxing, or maybe even ice skating... Or you could just go to the pub instead.