Exercise Sucks

Of the things that I need to do in order to stay healthy, exercising is by far the worst. I remember walking into some health club and being struck with the realization that it was like a medieval torture chamber except that everyone was there voluntarily. Never the less, there were the same horrible machines, designed to cause discomfort, arrayed in their bizarre and hideous beauty, all over the place. What really bugs me is that, if it’s so damn important, why does my body have to scream “stop it!” at me every time I do it? Eat some food that’s bad for you? Bravo! Lie around on the couch? Outstanding! Get my butt onto the stairmaster for 20min? ARRRRGH! Make it stop! And it seems like it does have to be at that level in order for it to be useful. In order to “challenge” my cardiovascular system, I’m supposed to bring my heart rate to 70% of max. I’d do the math, but it would reveal just how old a fart I am. At any rate, when I hit that point I’m breathing hard, etc. basically stressing myself. My body is very clearly saying “this is not fun.” One of the more effective ways of doing this is to watch a good TV show while exercising. The nice thing is that, in order to see what happens, I have to exercise and I’ve found that this actually motivates me to come back. That works well enough until I run out of episodes. There seems to be a very hard limit on how much good programming is out there, a sort of conservation of quality or something. So if you know of any really good TV shows please let me know. In the mean time, I’ll be slaving away on my torture machine.

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technorati: blather, rant, exercise, torture, bitching, moaning