Will 2025 be Ethan’s year?
2025 was just a few minutes old when I remembered what I’d signed up for. Fireworks were dazzling the night’s sky, rain was thundering down, and taxis were sounding their horns around the Ancoats flat where I was celebrating.
It’s a promise I’d made to myself in previous years, but this time it was different.
This was the year I was actually going to get fit and healthy, I’d said, and actually made a commitment to doing so, unlike past failed attempts.
But I had no intention of joining the gym. No, rather than fork out £29.99 a month to aimlessly faff around on training equipment I didn’t know how to use, I decided to go back to basics and just follow the council’s health advice.
Manchester has a serious health problem. Mancunians are frequently listed among those who will live the least longest, with a man in the city’s poorest areas not expected to make 71. Even those in affluent neighbourhoods are not expected to hit the UK average.
But Manchester’s health issue largely isn’t down to crumbling hospitals, long surgery waiting lists, or a scramble for GP appointments according to Dr Cordelle Ofori, the council’s director of public health.
“There’s a statistic I often quote about the health of a population and only up to 20 percent is a result of good health care,” she explained. “The other 80 percent is about your environment, your housing, your education, what kind of job you’ve got, all of those social things.
“So we need really good GPs and hospitals to be working well, but even the best healthcare at most gets us to 20 percent. All of the rest is really, really important.”
There are ‘four big killers’ which claim Mancunians early, namely heart disease, cancer, strokes, and lung disease. Dr Ofori’s department says, in Manchester, those conditions are largely caused by tobacco usage, a bad diet, and being too sedentary.
Therefore, the risk of developing these can be lessened by regular exercise, which is why Dr Ofori recommends ‘aiming to do 150 minutes of activity a week in any way you can make that work in your life’. “Whether that’s walking, running, dancing, cycling to and from work — whatever you can do that does not necessarily cost joining a gym or doing something specialist,” the expert added. “It’s not necessarily about following some fancy diet. It’s about moderation, good nutrition, making sure you’re getting plenty of fruit and vegetables.
“Within your diet, also try to cut out ultra-processed foods so basically anything like a ready meal or processed food.” She also encourages Mancs to stop smoking, vaping, or using any kind of tobacco.
With Dr Ofori’s advice — given to the Local Democracy Reporting Service in mid-December — ringing in my ears on January 1, I tried to have a healthy start to 2025.
Here’s how I got on.
Best laid plans
My first step was to meet with Joe Campbell. He works for Be Well, a service which promises users can ‘live and feel well, whatever twists and turns life brings’. Its staff can help with fitness, mental health, financial planning, meeting new people, and finding work.
It’s open to anyone registered at a Manchester GP, but you need to be referred to access the service.
Joe and I sat down at the Denmark Road leisure centre in mid-December and talked through what I wanted to get out of my month-long programme, and agreed some goals.
I’d already decided to give dry January a whirl, so alcohol wasn’t going to be an issue. However I’ve always struggled to stick to a diet — especially healthy ones — so Joe advised I plan my meals at the start of the week and only eat those.
The days of nipping out for a lazy pizza were over.
Exercise was the big one, though. I was very sporty as a teenager, but fell out of the habit as other commitments got in the way and I wanted to get back into it.
So Joe and I created a ‘menu’ of sport, including running, swimming, 7-a-side football, yoga, and occasionally climbing or padel.
If I did everything scheduled, I’d be active six days of the week, but my goal was to do three sports four times per week — so I could play football, swim, and go for a couple of runs — and hit the 150 minutes of activity goal.
I immediately hit a problem
After shaking off my New Year’s hangover, I tried to run on January 2. I immediately hit a problem which would go on to plague my healthy start.
Usually, I jog along the Bridgewater Canal towpath, but flooding had covered the track in a thick layer of silt. It was slippery, smelly, and unsightly, meaning I had to find a new route.
Due to where I live, near Cornbrook, that meant either running along the very busy Chester Road, or on canal towpaths underneath choked-up Mancunian Way. If I ventured into town proper, I’d have to come across Deansgate which was congested due to roadworks.
All in all, I was faced with little choice but to inhale exhaust fumes from Manchester’s age-old traffic woes. The same congested roads became an issue when I tried to swim. My nearest leisure centre is on Hulme High Street, and there’s not really a direct bus route from home.
With public transport out of the equation, I was confronted with a 27-minute walk on a dark and cold January morning, renting a Bee Bike and traversing more pollution on the Chester Road roundabout, or getting in my car.
With the promise of the fastest, cheapest, and warmest journey, I opted to get behind the wheel. In the end, getting back from the pool before work became a stress in itself as I queued with rush hour motorists.
It’s at this point I recognised I was part of the congestion problem — as the old saying goes, you’re not stuck in traffic, you are traffic — but it felt like I had little option to make swimming work. In the end, this was the activity I did the least.
As for my diet, the arrival of several cookbooks for Christmas gave me some impetus to try out new recipes. Halfway through my month, Joe and I met to review how progress was, and it provided more motivation to stick to my diet goal as something I had ultimate control over — there’s no traffic in my kitchen, after all.
A refocused mind
After my mid-point meeting, my mind was refocused. I started to look forward to when I could run among greenery, as I made an event out of doing the Saturday morning trip to Peel Park in Salford for the five-kilometre Parkrun.
But January’s icy weather did cancel one Parkrun. Fortunately, I also signed up for an indoor exercise class at Denmark Road to escape the sub-zero temperatures.
My resistance band class was designed by Manchester Active to get people moving after suffering mental health issues or ease arthritis pain as part of its ‘physical activity referral service’ (PARS). There’s also another less stringent PARS ‘pathway’ available for people recovering from heart attacks and surgeries.
The hour at Denmark Road was very good fun, with class leader Leah Fish infecting us all with enthusiasm as we bopped about to a playlist comprising our own requests. It seemed my 20-or-so classmates really, really enjoyed their time.
However, I would find the scheduling tricky long-term, as the 11am start is difficult with a full-time job.
All in all, I managed one week where I did every exercise possible, but I usually just about managed to hit my goal of three sports four times in seven days.
How did I find it?
By the beginning of February, I felt healthier. Regular exercise meant my sleep dramatically improved, my mood was more stable, and I felt slimmer, even if that wasn’t my goal.
I’d also eaten well, trying out new dishes, plus cutting out booze and sticking to the meal plan meant I saved a decent amount of money every week.
I’ve only good things to say about Joe and the Be Well service which made me feel like I was being willed on to do what I promised myself.
However, I can’t help but wonder if my success was only made possible by a lot of other factors in my favour.
Health is wealth, they say. So those with a good job, range of interests, and stable home and social life are always more likely to live longer. In the main, my life has those.
Therefore, someone without all of those positives might struggle to hit every goal. If you’re a working parent, finding two-and-a-half hours in a week for yourself to exercise can be tricky — especially if you need to factor in travel time to and from a leisure centre. For those just using the street as their gym, they then need to move around pollution to get the benefits of exercise.
But as far as myself is concerned, it’s now mid-February, and I can say I’m still trying to meet my goals agreed with Joe.
Maybe this is the year I actually get fit and healthy. And maybe I’ll actually enjoy it.
Manchester council was contacted for comment after the trial finished.
