Cold-water swimming: hype or health boost?

I should say at the outset that I was sceptical. I have read too many articles promising that one small change will transform your life, and I have made too many of those changes, and my life has remained stubbornly the same.

But there is something to be said for actually trying a thing rather than reading about it, so I did. For a month. Properly. What follows is an honest account of what happened.

It had stopped feeling like a chore and started feeling like part of the day

The first few days were, frankly, difficult. Not dramatically so, but in the way that any new habit is difficult: you keep forgetting, and then remembering, and then feeling slightly annoyed with yourself.

By the second week something had shifted. It was not that it had become easy, exactly, but it had stopped feeling like a chore and started feeling like part of the day, in the way that brushing your teeth is part of the day.

Week one

I asked an expert whether what I was noticing was real or whether I was simply paying attention to something I would normally have ignored. "Honestly, both," she said. "And that is not a bad thing. Paying attention is most of the benefit."

If I were starting again I would be less ambitious. The biggest mistake I made was trying to do it perfectly, which meant that the first time I slipped I felt as though the whole thing had failed. It had not. It just needed a lighter touch.

Would I recommend it? Cautiously, yes. Not as a transformation, because it is not one, but as a small, pleasant adjustment that costs almost nothing and gives back a little more than it takes.