WELCOME to the first proper post on my pre-nuptial fitness blog - and what better time to check in than the first day after the Easter holiday?

Hope you all had a good break and didn’t overdo it on the chocolate eggs. If you’re anything like me you’d happily not touch chocolate for a while now. With the Easter excesses now a fading memory, I thought now was a good time to update you on the three-week assessment I was put through last Thursday.

For those who didn’t see the piece in the Echo last week, I am signed up to the Get Results service at the Dolphin Centre gym, in Darlington, working with fitness instructor Michael Hodgson as I try to get in shape for my wedding (no, we still haven’t set a date yet).

Having spent three weeks following, with religious zeal, the gym routine Michael had set me off on, I was hopeful of some decent results at the first checkpoint. Four centimetres off my waist and a body fat drop of just over one per cent is a start, but I’m not getting carried away. Long way to go.

While my resting heart rate had also improved, my BP was still higher than I’d like and my weight had gone up slightly. I had been half-expecting this, reminding myself of the old adage that muscle weighs more than fat. So I’m not too concerned about what the scales say. Yet.

Weighing and measuring completed, it was time to re-write the rule book as far as far as my gym sessions were concerned. I’d been getting used to my old routine, so it felt like the right time to shake things up with a new, cardio-heavy workout.

Thursday’s session with Michael got off to a painful start, with my first experience of a Cooper Test, which was designed to test the physical fitness of Army recruits in the US. The gist of it is ‘run as far as you can in 12 minutes’. According to Wikipedia, my distance of 1.55km falls in the ‘very bad’ category, so there’s certainly some room for improvement there.

What with the Easter break, I’ve taken the opportunity, as I'm sure a lot of amateur gym-goers do, to slack off a bit, but I’m looking forward to getting the buzz back this week.