Other than placing an advertisement in my own paper, or walking in with a placard, it couldn’t have been any more obvious that at 3.15pm today I was positioned on the weighing machine inside Boots the chemist.

For any thought this could be done discreetly was soon shattered by a voice yelping from the wretched machine to ‘stand upright and stand still’. The voice didn’t just remind me once but did so five times.

Luckily my sense of humour continues to prevail as we move towards tomorrow’s next excursion to ‘boot camp’.

It’s hard to explain or even appreciate the change in attitude Tim Megginson’s body fit programme has given me – and one hopes the other 30 or so I have come to look forward to meeting just after 6am three times a week.

Of course its early days but like an addict being rehabilitated it’s all about one day and one step (well several if you could the 40 minute programmes!) at a time.

The biggest change is a re-awakening of food that is healthy, an intake of food that is balanced, protein enriched and nutritious and the recognition that four or five mugs of strong black coffee by mid morning is neither clever nor helpful or appropriate.

One alcoholic drink in the past seven days is certainly a change (I had a can of beer last night) and I realised tonight for the first time in my life I now leave home with a bottle of water in the car.

New members of Tim’s invigorating programme provide him with various bits of information but principally a brief statement of goals. I should have done them earlier but finally did so today and found it illuminating to confront those reasons as I emailed them across.

The improvements in weight may be minimal thus far but there are moments of sweet pleasure – I wore a jacket today that had been consigned to the back of the wardrobe for the obvious reason it didn’t button up comfortably.

It did today.