A pill to replace exercise would have appealed to people like me - which is why it shouldn't be developed

I took a year’s supply of caffeine, in tablet form, with my breakfast, among other equally inadvisable things. And it was only when I came off the pills that I realised how much havoc they’d been wreaking on my body

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Every one of us has looked in a mirror at some point, turned, grabbed a bit of excess flesh and thought how great it’d be if it just didn’t exist.

Then, I bet a large portion - myself included - have thought how convenient it would be if we could just have it sucked right out. Nothing drastic, just a little tuck. On those gnarly bits that slightly overhang your undercrackers. Y’know, to avoid the effort of having to break sweat.

Well, a weight loss ‘revolution’ is, apparently, on its way in the form of an exercise pill. The drug’s developers say it will be made available for medical purposes, ‘to those not able to exercise’. Taking the medicine will mimic the effects of an intense workout – or that’s the plan, at least.

Now, on the face of it that’s a noble quest, but I’d bet my house (if I could afford to buy one in London) that it will soon be hijacked by the lazy and desperate alike, on their own personal quest for bodily perfection.

It’s happened with other drugs, after all. Remember Viagra? Well, who doesn’t? It was hailed as the saviour of the erection, and erectile dysfunction was no longer an issue for many men thanks to that little blue pill. Again, that’s a good thing. But it didn’t take long for it to circulate beyond the world of the flaccid penis. Soon it became a must-have for an increasingly sex hungry world.

In America there are now 7,000 online pharmacists selling Viagra, but only 4 per cent of them are actual verified, compliant vendors. That’s more than 6,700 unregulated dealers, just in the US. Thousands of places where basically anyone can buy Viagra and use it recreationally. Or, more worryingly, thousands of places selling what they say is Viagra, but could be just about anything.

We live in a society where the need for instant perfection is driving people further beyond the brink. This need to be so damn skinny has become pervasive to the point we’re willing to sometimes quite literally cook ourselves thin with chemicals that speed our metabolisms up to sometimes fatal levels. ‘Diet pills’ containing a compound used by the Victorians as an explosive are widely available. And the results are anything but pretty.

Imagine you didn’t have to go for that run, or do that yoga class. Imagine you can eat that burger, or have another scoop of ice cream. Imagine that all you need to do is pop in a pill, wait twenty minutes and have a ‘workout’ from the comfort of your living room.

Then imagine a young girl, already gaunt from her fifth fast day of the week, gets hold of these pills. She wants results, and wants them fast. So, she takes two, three, four times the recommended dose. And we end up there again, asking questions about what drives a young girl to such lengths.

I’ll level with you: I’ve bought slimming aids before (and I’m a man.) I’m a fatty at heart, and was once over 19 stone. When I lost weight I was delighted - but never quite delighted enough. In fact I was never - and to certain extent never will be - completely satisfied. So, I bought into the hype, and bought some ‘fat strippers’. Every day for months I put my body through the ringer. I took a year’s supply of caffeine, in tablet form, with my breakfast, among other equally inadvisable things.

And it was only when I came off the pills that I realised how much havoc they’d been wreaking on my body. I had full-on withdrawal symptoms: real suffering. These things are just a click away. Hell, even some ‘health shops’ sell equivalents.

Fortunately, over time, I came to accept that being healthy was more important than being an unattainable, ever-changing idea of ‘perfect’ – and nothing about anything I had been doing was healthy. Health isn’t visual, and once I realised that, life was so much easier. But society tells us health is visual, and then expects us not to take increasingly desperate measures to achieve the same look.

There’s one good answer to all of this: exercise. But if it comes in the form of a pill, we’ll only compound the problem.