THIS week, I want to exercise your minds. Your bodies I will turn to shortly, likewise your brains, about which I will have a few critical remarks to make.

The food for thought that I’d like you masticate carefully is the news that, despite alleged public spending of £500 million a year, many Scots are refusing to rise from the couch and waddle on a treadmill, grimace on an abdominals nauseator, or activate key muscles on their balls.

Stability balls, that is. The hope was that, after the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, folk would be inspired to hirple forth to the gym or take up a sport like soccer or quoits.

I’m not sure it works like that. Most of us look at professional sportsmen stravaiging aboot and think: “I’ll never look like that. It’s depressing. I need some comfort food and a small vat of sherry while I reflect on the unfairness of the world.”

Holyrood’s health and sports committee sat in their seats and admitted they’d seen “no current evidence of an active legacy from the 2014 games”. No? Who’d have thunk it?

Maybe they should ask for their money back. Actually, £400 million of it came from local authorities, but I said “alleged” earlier because all public spending figures are bosh. They’re always suspiciously rounded, always unfeasibly large, and never commensurate with the claimed work. If you asked a cooncil to change a light bulb, the cost would be put at £600,000.

Pressed to explain, they’d adduce the necessity for a pilot study, the services of three independent consultants, two committee meetings with associated expenses and “sundries”, the cost of importing the dolphin-friendly (as per council policy) bulb from the Himalayas and, finally, the wages for a wee man in overalls (and his van and his sandwiches – two maximum, no trans-fats) to bludgeon the item into position. Addendum: cost now £860,000 due to expense of having to reply to this query.

So let’s agree: no one has spent £500m, even if they did put up a few posters and organise a beginners’ class in cage-fighting for the elderly. It’s no use throwing money at the problem anyway.

It’s all in the mind, or to be more precise – let’s get physical here – the brain. I have disturbing news for you: the brain is the enemy. It’s your brain that stops you exercising and prevents you from writing the great novel. Why? Because it is bone idle.

What does your brain do when a wee, robe-wearing, Yoda-like sage deep back in a distant part of your mind suggests that you go to the gym? It starts to make excuses. Same with the novel. This is your brain about the latter: “Too many words. Life’s too short. Book’s too long. Nobody’ll believe a novel about a man who gives up all hope of happiness and becomes a journalist. They’ll pan it. ‘Cos it’s rubbish. You’re rubbish. Shut up. Eat something. Sit doon.”

Thus the brain. It gets even more narked at the thought of going to the gym. Excuse after excuse comes forth: “It’s too far away. It costs too much. Macho men will make you arm-wrestle them. You won’t be able to work the complicated equipment. The cord of your elasticated waistband will get caught on a piece of machinery and your troosers will fall doon and everyone will see your bum. The shop doesn’t have any pies.”

That said, some excuses are valid. After our report, a reader eloquently made the case for removing the omnipresent mirrors in gyms. This is a fair point. Mirrors reveal truth, and truth is always deplorable. It saps the spirit and magnifies the love-handles. Scotland, in my view, would benefit from a nationwide ban on mirrors. At the very least, as a wise colleague has just averred, mirrors should make government ministers pause for reflection.

The Holyrood committee did in fact adduce that many Scots were too embarrassed to go to the gym. Others remembered negative experiences of PE at school. Well, ain’t that the truth? I never went to PE for years because, despite being a state school, we only got rugby, cricket and badger-baiting; nae fitba’ until we went comprehensive, when I returned to the fold and was called “Richard” by the PE teacher, who didn’t remember me from first year.

Actually, playing football for youth teams in Scotland was also hellish, with purple-faced men cursing you from the sidelines and team-mates resenting the trialist that took a regular’s place.

See? There’s a lot more to exercise than meets the eye. In the meantime, Scottish ministers and councillors need to get off their butts, spend less money, and get this country moving. Scotland won’t run itself, you know.