For the past several years, I’ve heard a piece of mythology passed off as fact by my (thinner) friends. “Come warm weather,” they’d invariably say, picking absently at a perceived love handle where only washboard abs existed, “something changes. When it gets warm out, you’ve just got to work out. You can’t help it. It’s like an act of nature or something.”

So, for the past several years, come warm weather, I’ve made myself perfectly available, just in case that act of nature decided to stop by and make me do a sit-up or two. Nothing happened.

After awhile, I figured out that the Warm-Weather-Makes-You-Work-Out myth belonged on the same list of nonsense with old standards like Kissing-Toad-Gives-Warts and Step-On-Crack, Break-Mom’s-Back.

I was wrong. Now that winter is (supposedly) upon us, I’ve seen the light. It’s warm out (at least for mid-January). And man, am I getting serious about fitness.

Well … serious is a bit of a stretch. But “fitness” is a relative term, and I’ve been relatively sedentary for the past 15 months or so, after sustaining a leg injury that long ago ceased to A) hurt; B) ache; or C) get me any sympathy from anyone at all. The fact is, for me, a jog to the bathroom, followed by a walk to the fridge officially counts as cross-training.

But for the past two days, I’ve been working out like a wild man. I jogged (on a treadmill, not to the bathroom). I lifted weights (in addition to the hefting I do to get my carcass out of bed each morning).

And you can blame it all on the weather.

You see, since November, I’ve been engaging in that peculiar age-old Maine custom of doing next to nothing and waiting for large bodies of water to freeze. … Largely to no avail.

Sure, some lakes have some ice. Sure, some people are out there with their tip-ups and augers and … snacks! … fishing up a storm.

Not me. Nope. No way.

Call me cautious. Call me a sissy. Call me anything you want. All I know is this: Until they officially put the 100-meter dogpaddle-through-34-degree-water into the Olympics, and I can parlay that particular ability into a shot at my very own Wheaties box, I’m gonna sit where the sitting’s safe.

And for me – at this weight – the safest place is right here on terra firma. (At least, it’s pretty safe there … as long as nobody happens by on a day when I haven’t shaved and mistakes me for a walrus or something).

Now, experts will tell you that it’s perfectly safe to trudge out onto a lake, so long as you “stop often and drill test holes to ascertain the thickness of the ice.”

I’ve got a better solution: Let’s send the skinny people out to drill the test holes for us. I’ll sit on dry land, man the Coleman stove, stir the chili, and guard the thermos.

The other night, I was watching the weather-guessers on TV, and it became obvious that just waiting for winter to show up in earnest wasn’t going to work.

Apparently, it’s never gonna get really cold. At least not soon. And that means one of three things had to happen.

I could get more daring, and go fishing.

I could sit at home … safely.

Or I could lose weight, so that when I do go out to pop a trap into the test hole my skinny friends drill, I’ll at least be safer.

I reluctantly opted for the weight-losing option.

And after two days, I’m happy to report that I’m getting much closer to my optimum fishing weight.

Exactly what that weight is, I’m not sure. I’ll have to wait and tell you after I decide exactly how bad I want to fish, and how sick I get of exercising.

And after I see if I can round up some skinny friends who’ll check my test-hole traps for me.

John Holyoke is a NEWS sportswriter. His e-mail address is jholyoke@bangordailynews.net