What Happens When I Work Out

Confession: I’m not the most athletic person in the world.

In fact, full disclosure… I’m probably not even in the top five.

But I nonetheless understand the importance of developing a healthy diet and a consistent fitness routine, to promote immunity and longevity and metabolism… and when you frollup around with snartithicus and kerplunkitude there’s a high likelihood of hipperdashing your wargle.

(…Did you stop caring? Me too.)

I KNOOOOW health and fitness are good for me, okay? I really do. Honest. You should drink water, and get up from your desk once an hour, and Cheez-its aren’t a food group. I got it.

Which is why Taylor and I have recently been making an effort to go to the gym daily.

But knowing that working out is good for me doesn’t make it any easier, and going to the gym is still the worst part of my day life. I spend every watt of brainpower festering about how much I hate what I’m doing, for every second that I’m doing it.

I understand that these thoughts aren’t constructive. I should be thinking about how much good I’m doing, how much my body will thank me later, how cool those colored-sweat-people look in Gatorade commercials. I should be high on endorphins and adrenaline, I should be reveling in my physical progress, and I should be PUMPED-period-UP-period.

There are actually people in the world who claim to love working out, who actually get some kind of sick pleasure from it… so why can I barely tolerate the experience for 40 minutes a day?

It isn’t like I don’t try. I’ve adjusted my iPod strategy from hip hop, to stand up comedy, to the actual Pandora workout station… I try to distract myself by prioritizing my to-do list for the day, people watching, remembering what we need at Target (or planning my next blog post…) if my brain is psychologically incapable of enjoying exercise, it’s not for lack of trying.

I somehow developed a theory recently that maybe if I work out harder, I’ll reach some kind of physical nirvana where my brain will just shut off – and I’ll go into an elevated level of consciousness and all that will matter is my pounding heart. Maybe that’s the secret of those gym freaks enthusiasts.

But I’ve tested this theory on my last few gym visits – and I have yet to experience physical nirvana. Instead, all it does is shift my brain function from creating to-do lists to counting down the milliseconds until I’m done. It is absolutely all I can think about.

I start employing external forces to measure the time I have remaining: I’ll stop as soon as that TV goes to commercial. The next time that running guy makes another lap on the track. As soon as this song is over.

I became intimately familiar with the anatomy of a pop song. Verse – bridge – chorus, verse – bridge – chorus.

Then, they make you think the song is over – then comes a big break, vocal, drum building, and another chorus.

Mother of god, it makes me pine for the days when songs were just made up of four eight-counts and a few claps. (What ever happened to Mary Had a Little Lamb, anyway?)

I run and jump and grunt for so long and with such vigor that my vision starts to go blurry and I suddenly have the overwhelming urge to fall asleep. I start to ask questions like, “Can a person actually die from working out? Is that a thing? Cuz I’m pretty sure I might be dying right now. In fact, I might already be dead.”

After such a session, I am such a useless blob that I can do nothing more than stand in front of a fan for ten minutes like a dog sticking his head out of a car window. I trudge through the gym like a mouth-breathing knuckle-dragger, incapable of even mustering the necessary energy to suck my tummy in under my too-tight-fitting workout wear.

I usually seek refuge at the ab machine, where I lay down and “isolate my core”… and by that I mean, gasp for air and stare into oblivion for awhile.

And good news, everybody! I get to do it all over again tomorrow morning!

Whatever, though. I’m just gonna go have some cheez-its.