Winter come-ith, to exercise or not to exercise?
Everywhere I go there are always a handful of people that come
up to me to ask how I keep such a manly physique.
“Geez! Do you ever
leave the gym?!” They exclaim.
I always feel bad when I have to tell them I have just always
had these giant muscles and I actually loathe working out.
Maybe that is a little too embellishing. I should have said, “I have just always
had these giant muscles and I actually don’t
enjoy working out.”
Ok, so maybe I can’t bench press as much weight as I would like
to think I could. I just haven’t
found a compelling reason to work on this personal deficiency. I can bench press my one-year-old
daughter and she gets a kick out of it so that’s good enough for me. It’s not like there are big bench-pressing
tournaments coming through town on a weekly basis or contests to prove which
over muscle-bound guy can scratch his neck first.
These contests must exist though as I saw several people honing
the craft when I toured a gym a while back to see if I wanted to join.
As much as I don’t enjoy working out, working out in a public
gym was twice as bad for me. But
it was after one of those winters where you realize what happens when you go
from bed to work, work to couch, and couch to bed all without seeing the sun
for 4 straight months so I thought I would give it a shot.
My first gym experience wasn’t as dreadful as I envisioned. I was worried that there would be a lot
of staring and judging. But I soon
realized that in order to be stared upon the gym regulars would have to take
their eyes off the mirror first.
I had a moderately pleasant workout save for the 2 people
telling me how I was doing something wrong on a machine. My muscles were clearly getting
fatigued so I know I was doing something right. Or at least right enough. The last thing you want to hear when you are working on a
hernia is how to tweak your posture for more gains. I feel sorry for the next gym rat that tries to tell me how
to do my personal workout because that guy will find himself in the throws of a
long emotional conversation.
I was still debating joining the gym when I was packing my
things up that day and noticed a guy using the public hairdryer in a manner
that I don’t think the manufacturers had in mind. Use your imagination.
At that scarring moment I swore off joining a gym indefinitely. I’m not sure why I even thought I
was right for a gym membership when there is free ground all around me and I
hardly even use that to exercise.
So, alas, I have resorted to keeping the ship upright by trying
all kinds of different diets. This
is more so I don’t have to decide what to eat on a daily basis rather than to
shed weight. The world is full of
too many tasty options so I prefer to just be told what to eat. Most recently I finished a 6-month
stint of The 4 Hour Body; a diet that promises you’ll lose 20 pounds in 30 days
while working out 4 hours each month.
The author doesn’t claim to be a medical doctor or PhD, but he did weigh
his *** for a while so he clearly knows more about weight loss than I do. He claims all you have to do is eat
meat, vegetables, and beans for every meal and nothing else. This was pretty easy to follow but the
increased legume intake can lead to domestic disgust.
This diet did well for me until my brain said “screw you” and subconsciously
forced me on a month long pasta binge putting me just slightly better than when
I had started.
Now that the nice weather is over and the sun is heading south
for the winter I’m content with letting things go for a bit. I think I’ll just buy bigger sweatpants
and occasionally I’ll exercise through osmosis by watching The Biggest Loser,
the first show named after the people who watch it.