Let’s talk motivation. And let’s do it while playing Kelly Rowland’s song in the background.

It’s good, right?

We all know how the story usually goes. We wait for the new year and we make all those resolutions: signing up for the gym, Pilates every week, running at  6 am every day (I’m actually seriously considering this). We don’t really want to do any of these things, but we know it’s good for us. And what better time to start than new year?

We do it. We do it for a week, for a month, for two. But how do we keep on going? How do we stay motivated? It’s not easy, at least for some of us.

And this is where London boy comes in. Mind you, this one’s mine. Please find your own. But with him in the picture, everything just fell in its place.

Please. It’s not that I think I need to look good/lose (or maybe put on) weight for a man.

No, it all started with me planning the agenda for his visit.

He always laughs when I say this.

And I’m totally serious.

My last try before his visit – and here I have it. Mission impossible. Hundred pushups? No way.

So I pushed this idea out of my mind.

But then, on the bus to the airport for the last hug and goodbye, when I kept weeping about not being able to hold his hands, he repeated: ‘You can hold my hand if you do 100 pushups.’ He must have seen my sad sad face and must have actually heard me trying to reason with him, as suddenly he said: ‘Do 60 pushups… and you can hold my hands whenever you want’.

And that did it! The ‘whenever’ part. Which means, day, night, day and night, all the time!!!

That’s all I needed for my motivation. And so every other day I work it and I push it and I hate it every time I do it. But I don’t give up.

I beg him to bring it down to 50. He doesn’t bulge.

I try to prove my body is not capable of doing it. He stays firm.

I count the pushups, up by a number, down by two.

I just keep on going.