Boris Johnson using a personal trainer is a high-profile fix to mask his policy failings

Only the other week an overweight man had the astonishing cheek to urge Brits to emerge from lockdown and embark on a mission to get fit and shed those extra pounds we’d piled on snacking in front of the telly. Boris Johnson might seem an unlikely poster boy for any kind of health campaign but he’s proved to be a man of his word – having been snapped this week working out with a celebrity trainer said to charge £165 an hour.

Sadly, jogging when you weigh more than fifteen stone is the worst kind of exercise, placing serious strain on your heart and knee joints. Johnson (possibly because he has a glamorous skinny fiancee several decades younger than the date on his birth certificate) has fallen prey to what I call middle-aged man syndrome.

He wants to morph into a lean, mean macho fellow, sending the message to voters that he’s 100 per cent fit, utterly recovered from Covid-19 and more than capable of running the country through these challenging times. Unfortunately, vanity (and modern fashion) has meant he’s going about the task completely the wrong way.

Intensive training has become a religion. Its “experts” are modern evangelists and our narcissistic society has fallen for the exercise myth, hoping it will bring us status and social acceptance. Paying big bucks for a celebrity gut-buster doesn’t guarantee you’ll get the results you want – and any gain will almost certainly be short-lived. In the end, it could do more harm than good.

I write from experience. For more than a decade in my forties and fifties, I paid for a personal trainer twice a week. I built an exercise area in my basement, installed an ugly multi-gym machine, bought a cycling machine, and a rack of free weights. This was after I’d suffered a slipped disc twice, once jogging and the second time on a long distance hike carrying a heavy rucksack.

After surgery, I was determined to build up my core strength and acquire muscles. I even paid for a boxing trainer for a while, because I deluded myself that helped with my “stress”. In fact, weights and over-exercise caused endless joint problems as I didn’t realise I was suffering from an inflammatory condition. I had several small surgical interventions, joints were cleaned out and excess fluid removed. Finally, I had a knee replacement two years ago, the direct result of over-exercise.

To rehabilitate, I went back into the gym with a trainer for two months twice a week and did daily exercises with rubber bands. I did not run or do weights. These days, I exercise carefully (at 73) because I can’t face more knee surgery and I don’t have a trainer because I do not want to be “pushed” to any so-called personal “limit” as the results can be disastrous.

The key factor guiding any attempt to get “fit” is to be realistic about what you can achieve and ignore every image of so-called “success stories” you see on social media. Forget role models – you must set your own goal and make it simple and achievable. Johnson is doomed to failure, he has fallen for the modern hype surrounding exercise, just as I did. He has spent more than three decades building up his bulk, eating badly, scoffing at will and drinking regularly – he’s not naturally thin like his brother Jo.

The current obsession with “keeping fit” is unhealthy. Magazines and supplements urge us to do tough exercises like the plank in order to build up our “core” – with pictures of Halle Berry on the beach in a bikini, looking muscular and toned at 54. She obviously does hundreds of planks and sit-ups. But is that routine admirable?

Not really – she’s that shape because she works in movies playing comic book heroes, ludicrous characters who bear no resemblance to real life. A trainer puts her through a ridiculous routine because it’s part of her job and stars can probably claim the costs off their tax bill.

In the real world, women have stomachs and men have flabby bits around their middle. The best we can hope for is to remain flexible and able to walk comfortably for an hour a day, reach for things in the home and get in and out of the bath without resorting to ropes and pulleys. We want to enjoy sex – but forget doing anything too gymnastic.

Like everything emanating from Johnson’s brain, this new keep-fit doctrine was not properly thought through, and smacks of a photo-friendly PR stunt.

I always thought the snaps of Johnson on a bike were no advert for the health benefits of cycling because he didn’t extend the keep fit regime to his calorie intake, but even cycling is better for an overweight man than running. Keeping fit should be a personal goal, not something easier to achieve if you pay for a lycra-clad helper.

As a nation, we are the fatties of Europe, but that’s because schools have been allowed to flog off their playing fields, because outdoor exercise is not a central part of the daily curriculum. Because school meals are not compulsory and because cookery classes are not mandatory in primary schools. Because we allow parents to drive children to school and not walk.

To reduce child obesity, you have to work on pupils from the moment they start school. Learning about healthy eating and basic cookery, they can teach their parents. If they exercise every day, they will leave school fitter and less likely to burden the NHS.

Successive governments have failed to tackle obesity in this depth, preferring quick fix solutions like handing out vouchers for slimming drinks and weight loss classes to adults. By the time you have reached your thirties, changing your body shape is a huge, time consuming task. And it’s also something you might very well fail at.

Once again, Johnson has lurched into a high profile quick fix “solution” of a problem, (his bulk) without thinking how best he could help the poorer and more deserving members of the population.