Carrying all the newspapers and glossy magazines that come out on Sundays – without dropping one or the other on your way back from the newsagent — has become impossible. It is even more difficult these days to open a magazine or newspaper without finding advice on how to lose weight, get fit, look beautiful and really prepare to meet the challenge of the new season. Sacrifice the autumn to look better this winter!

The blitz starts with the request that “you take a long, cool look at yourself in the mirror” and, rather cheekily, assumes that you won’t like what you see. I am not sure this is really justified; to the starry-eyed everything is beautiful. But let us accept, for the moment, that your long cool look does indeed reveal one or two minor imperfections. What should you do about it?

My first reaction is to sit down and have a large Scotch. Don’t believe what the fitness freaks tell you about the therapeutic value of tea and other Eastern herbs. Scotch is far more effective in the treatment of shock.

My second reaction is to have another Scotch.

The third, however, is to make your mind up that something must be done – tomorrow. And it is usually means seeing how the braver go about it.

A book by that old solo sailor, Francis Chichester, tells you “how to keep fit, by one who never is as fit as he would like to be”. It is one permanent inspiration I keep on my bookshelf. It hasn’t made me feel any fitter, but just reading it fills me with determination and makes me feel that, at least, I have made a start.

In his book, the late (no sarcasm intended) Sir Francis declares he would have liked “to be as fit as a tiger in the prime of life. I don’t mean that I want to be able to carry a full-size bullock in my jaws without it touching the ground for miles, but I would like to have a tiger’s agility, endurance, speed, sight, and hearing, and, perhaps I might add, its grace of movement.” My sentiments precisely, even if I’d be content with the lesser attributes of Pippin our cat.

Sir Francis used to have a half hour of glory every morning – a period which, he writes, “can best be likened to the stretching, arching and yawning of a cat or dog on awakening.” I have always found the yawning part easier to follow than the stretching and arching, but I have tried it. The problem is it all makes you very hungry. I suspect it happens to tigers and cats too, but they don’t have to take long cool looks at themselves in the mirror.

Then there are different diets that threaten your sanity. Sir Francis used one called The Guelpa Diet, a kind of torture that forces you to have nothing but apple juice on the first day and nothing but very dry toast on the second. Another problem – you won’t have any energy left for stretching and arching. This means you become, as the old man of the sea points out in his book, “intolerant and impatient, flying into a temper if thwarted or held up, or rushing into doing something rash when you ought to be thinking.” But of course you do feel fitter, and if you lose your job or your life companion in the meantime, well, nothing is perfect in this world.

Who hasn’t tried other diets? No two experts ever seem to agree. One tells you to eat nothing but fat, another insists this is the quickest way to become an 18-stone mountain of flesh. One suggests eating nothing except potatoes, another thinks this is a sure and fast way to the grave.

Colleagues and family are no help. One claims to have lost so many pounds by giving up fruit, the other says he or she lost as many by eating nothing but fruit. And so it goes.

Like most people, I am a sucker for anything which promises to make one slim and beautiful without much effort. One newspaper “diet plan” tells you to “cheer up. You can do the whole job painlessly – almost in a week.”

Step one looked intriguing – “on waking, have a small tumbler of water at room temperature, then, lie back for five minutes before getting up. This helps to start the kidneys working – very good for weight loss.” I tried it and, indeed, went one better. I lay back for 15 minutes. I didn’t lose weight, but that may just possibly have had something to do with the fact that a couple of strong pre-lunch drinks were forced on me.

Another thing with diets is that friends and people around you see it as some kind of challenge. The moment you announce that you are on a diet, everyone tries to get you off it. “Oh, come on,” they insist, “a little drink can’t do much harm.”

Then there are the loony ones, like the Grapefruit Diet that lets you eat normally, including forbidden foods such as steaks, sausages and scrambled eggs “and still lose weight”, or the advice to go to restaurants as usual, but to order only foods one detests. This is, they tell you, one sure way of losing weight.

One particular favourite is the “worry diet”, based on a very simple principle. According to the author of a book on “how to put ON weight”, a Dr Robert Andrew, worry is one of the chief causes if one is underweight. People who are skinny tend to spend an awful lot of time worrying themselves sick. Ergo, if worry keeps people slender, it should, logically, help those who seek to shed a few surplus kilos.

But how is one to measure certain worries in terms of calories? One knows the impact of a pork chop, a glass of white wine, but not that of worrying over the forthcoming Gonzi budget. Is it 50 calories for worrying whether it is going to rain tomorrow, and 60 for: “My God, I didn’t really say all that last night, did I?”

Or 80 calories for worrying about the new chap in the office and 75 for simply thinking: “What did the chairman mean by that remark, yesterday?”

And does “Is that a warden next to my parked car?” save you 30 calories. Perhaps even worrying about your having put on too much weight, scores well in the calorific sense. In these troubled days, I am sure you will be able to think up many more if you really try. There’s no end to the things you can worry about, is there? And I don’t just mean the economy.

One look at the collective shape and size of our Cabinet Ministers got me seriously worried. They don’t seem to be worrying too much... Don’t they want to have a beautiful body? Well, at least they are keeping the rest of the nation in trim.