“Ugh, what’s the point?!” is something I (a little too regularly, I’ll admit) shout at my boyfriend when I’m in a strop about not losing weight. Unlike him, I’m a slave to the scales, and if they haven’t moved – or have gone up! – my day is ruined. Unlike me, he is logical about getting fit, and knows that how your body feels and how your clothes fit are a much better indicator of progress, and thus he finds the whole idea of my strops very trying.

When I went home last week and didn’t go to the gym or watch what I ate at all, I didn’t visibly gain a huge amount of weight, regardless of the fact the scales had risen by a few pounds when I got back to London. This was both great and annoying – if I can stuff my face for seven days and it not really have any affect on my body – why do I bother hitting the gym every day? Why wear myself out if nothing changes when I don’t?

But of course that’s ludicrous, and the only way I got away with eating so much cake is directly related to the fact I work out. Replacing fat with muscle after 3 months of lifting weights has meant that my body is more finely tuned to dealing with what I put into it, and uses what exercise I do do more effectively than the body I had back in January. Whilst I was eating badly, I was burning some of it off just by having a body that now knows how to do that.

Working out doesn’t only improve your body for the hour or two that you’re in the gym. Working out trains your body to be better in every way, all of the time. My boyfriend feels the effects of a hard gym session the morning after, whereas it takes my body an extra day for the hurt to kick in. I’m not sure what that’s the case, but that’s just how it’s worked out. Which means that my own argument of “what’s the point?!” is dead in the water from the get-go, because my body is still dealing with what I’ve made it do in the gym on a monday night on a wednesday!

So for people like me who think – “what’s the point of working out if nothing changes when I don’t?” – spin that on it’s head. If supposedly nothing happens whether you do or don’t hit the gym, you might as well do it anyway and stop moaning. What have you got to lose?