I RETURN from my holiday from all things Champion (this blog included) with a frank admission. I am fat.

The reason I mention this is because tomorrow I'm meeting up with a nutritionalist for a feature I'm doing for GR8Life, our sister magazine, on healthy eating. When it eventually gets published it'll coincide perfectly with the bit of early 2011 when you might concede you've eaten a tad too much turkey over Christmas, and decide via the region's best lifestyle magazine you need a little help getting back into shape. Hence the decision to offer myself as a guinea pig.

Before I go all Bridget Jones on you there's all sorts of reasons why I've inadvertantly piled on the pounds throughout 2010 so far; an office-based job which involves lots of sitting down in front of computers, over-reliance on classic cars for just about every journey imaginable, penchant for pizza and real ales, ongoing dislike of gyms for starters. For a feature tentatively titled New Year, New You, I am a ready-made candidate.

So not only will I be taking the nutritionalist's nourishing tips on board, I'll be dusting down the old bicycle at the back of the garage, getting down to the swimming pool more often and spending a little less time down down the pub than I'd ideally like.

Personally, I always think there's an element of risk with features like these, largely because by doing it so publicly I'm inviting not only useful tips and suggestions, but snidey comments, jokes and insults from readers about an issue most people are sensitive about, whether they admit it or not. As with the pyjamas piece I did for The Champion earlier this year, I'll have to have a fairly thick skin to do it, but it's worth it in the interests of good journalism and helping readers who might be stuck in the same position.

Why share it with readers of GR8Life and, through occasional updates on the subject over the next few months, this blog? Because it's the story behind a story I'm working on, albeit not a Champion one.

The spring edition of GR8Life Magazine with the finished feature will be published early next year.

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