Michael Kelly: Exercise your right to say no to useless fitness fads

CLAIMS that higher gym fees will discourage membership in these days of recession should be a cause for celebration for those who have resolved to lose weight this year. The fall in gym membership, it is said, will lead to the public drive against obesity having even less impact than the millions already poured into these campaigns.

Well, it won't. Let us not mourn the demise of gyms. They have not led to national fitness. For a start, fat people fear going into the gym as children fear going into the dark. I've been working out in the gym more or less faithfully for 20 years. The only regulars I meet there are the slim, fit guys who want to stay that way. The fatties come and go - as their motivation waxes and wanes - with no noticeable impact on their Body Mass Index. Without the right mindset, gym-goers lose no weight. So those who want to slim down themselves and, consequently, the NHS budget, should rejoice in rejecting expensive gym fees and throw away the chains of their exercise bikes. Fitness is free.

My motivation for exercising comes from two sources. First, the fear of contracting the illnesses associated with fatness and unfitness. Second, I ski, and to properly enjoy a skiing holiday with your athletic children and eager grandchildren you need to keep up. Find your own reason.

And that in a shellsuit is the key to solving personal and societal obesity problems: motivation and inspiration, never mind the hardware. But that is not a glamourous or commercial route to go down. We are all mugs for gimmicks - in the area of health even more than in the rest of life. Gyms are merely one of the latest cons. They are great if you want a bit of relaxation, finishing off an easy session with a wee swim or a sauna. But ways to get fit for free are all around us. You walk whenever you can; you use stairs, not lifts; you run on pavements or through parks (more picturesque than any fitness studio); you stretch and loosen up before and after. And you get fit - leaving you those extra pennies and pounds to pay your increases in VAT.

Avoid gimmicks that purport to make exercise easier. Exercise isn't easy. But from the Bullworker to those complicated pieces of equipment sold on TV shopping channels to work your abs, people have been fooled into substituting expenditure for effort. The only exercise you get from these things is from dragging them from out under the bed and wrapping them up after a cheap sale on EBay. As for buying a fitness game for a Wii console, only couch potatoes need apply.

But don't think all this exercise will also lose you weight. For that you need to balance the output of energy to the input, and anyone trying to lead a normal life simply cannot exercise enough. That requires a disciplined diet.Well, not a diet - a change of eating habits. Again, so many people are fooled into signing up for special diets which cost money. You are supposed to be eating less. It shouldn't cost you more. Pull yourself together and stop eating.

But those who have let their bodies go are always looking for the easy way out - that is why they became so horribly misshapen in the first place: lack of discipline in their lives. And the "health" industry exploits them to the full. Parents resisted protecting their kids with the MMR vaccine yet sent them off to school with bottled water on the grounds that public authorities charged with providing safe drinking water could be trusted less than those selling a more expensive version solely for profit. And people swallowed the propaganda that drinking more water was good for you, boosting sales of these products to criminal levels given the damage they do to the environment. Nature has developed a wonderful mechanism for determining how much water is good for you. Doctors know it as "thirst". When you are "thirsty" you need a drink. That's it. And take it out of a tap.

There are lots of other drinks you can save money on by avoiding them. Start with those tiny probiotic sips. There is no way that one of those a day balances a fish supper. As for the cholesterol-lowering spreads, they don't help a jot to counteract a full Scottish breakfast. Good bacteria? Aye, right. Stick to fruit and veg.

Even more farcical as health aids are the "essential" oils marketed by health shops. They aren't any more necessary to health or wellbeing than the snake oil they have replaced. In fact, most of the stuff these places punt won't help your health at all. So resist the two-for-one offers. The first won't do you any good and you'll throw the second one away.

It's all part of this homeopathic movement, which is causing so much damage to people's health as they turn away from proven treatments in search of miracle cures. Important savings will be made to health service budgets once we cut the waste of resources diverted from successful conventional medicine. Despite what quacks tell you, some illnesses are just not curable.

Most of the modern health kicks are a combination of lifestyle aspirations - which are all style and no life - an unfounded suspicion of conventional science and medicine and a growing desperation to rely on mysticism and magic to solve life's problems. These insecurities are fuelled by unscrupulous industries concerned not with the national health, but with the profits they can screw out of the gullible.

The latest craze, I am told, is that Chinese tea can help you lose weight. I am going to use my supply to wash down the last of the mince pies. I am sure it will work.