It pains me to admit it, but I think I’ve reached ‘peak gym.’

So much so that my boyfriend, my boss and various other colleagues and friends have pretty much begged me to take time away from it to regroup and stabilise myself before starting again.

When my boyfriend dragged me to the gym one rainy day in January, I’d only been inside one once before. I went one time at Uni with my friend Stephen, rode the exercise bike whilst watching Masterchef for about 45 minutes and then immediately went to the pub.

Fast forward to today, and I’ve gone from a total novice to going to the gym up to seven times a week, sometimes twice a day. I also walk 30 miles to and from work during the working week, and – when the sun shines – try to fit a quick walk into my lunch break to break up the day.

The thing is – I’m knackered. Well and truly knackered. I had to take a day off work last week because I was too tired to even function, and had made myself fairly violently ill as a consequence. But missing a work out makes me feel guilty beyond belief, and if I’ve made a pact with myself to hit the gym at 6am, if the alarm goes off and I can’t face it, I can’t get back to sleep because I’m doing the workout I would have done (but was too lazy to do) in my head, in real time. Most days I don’t even tell my boyfriend I’m thinking about going to the gym the next morning, yet when I hit snooze on the alarm and lie in bed for another hour, I feel like I’ve let him down.

It’s important to note that during this whole process, he’s fast asleep. And has no idea what’s going on.

Following a fairly major breakdown, my boyfriend has made me promise to take the rest of the week off from working out. In fact his exact words were: “no more gym for you!” Honestly, if you’d told me 10 years ago that I wasn’t allowed to go any exercise for a week, I would have been the happiest kid in the world. But today, I feel a sort of guilty pleasure that doesn’t sit right with me.

I think it’s because, when I say “I work out too much,” you’d expect me to look like Kate Upton. You’d conjure up a lithe, toned, babe of a woman in your mind – your typical gym bunny. That I am not. I’m just someone who is stuck in a rut, too tired to cope and on the verge of something quite unpleasant.

So in the meantime, my boyfriend has prescribed me sleep, lots of good food, pyjama parties, kickabouts on the common, nights out with the girls and everything BUT the gym to put a smile back on my face. He’s kinda the best..