Exercise is EVIL

  My relationship with exercise started strong. As a child/teenager I played up to three game of field hockey a week, plus training. Then there were all the other sports I loved to participate in – I made my hometowns indoor soccer team, the school outdoor soccer team, played softball...yadda yadda yadda.

When school finished and I moved to the big city, my exercise went from extensive to non-existent. I didn’t know many people, the two friends I moved there with didn’t play sport and I wasn’t into going to the gym by myself – so I stopped exercising altogether.

There was this one instance about a year and a half after I left school, where my boyfriend drove me back home for the weekend and my mum talked me into playing another game of hockey. I shit you not, after playing one game I couldn’t walk for a week.

Do you know how embarrassing it is to board a busy Melbourne tram when you can’t bend your legs? Apparently it’s very humorous because my husband still laughs at the memory, but since then I’ve been convinced that exercise is no longer my friend.

Last week my sister in law dragged me to a gym class. “Thighs, bum and stomach class” she tells me, which evidently only consists of a crap load of lunges, squats and sit-ups. Do you know how many of those you can fit into forty five minutes?? Yeah, me either and it didn’t help that the instructor had no idea how to count. After ten minutes I was watching the clock wondering how my now shaking legs would make it through the remaining time, but the damn woman at the front was taunting me.

“Okay people, just another ten more.”

I admit I’m a goal-orientated person. Give me a number to achieve and I’ll push myself to get there. But every single f-ing time I hit the mark, the damn woman would keep counting. “Okay just another two more,” Are you shitting me??
So the next day comes and my husband is taunting me with his sniggers and smirks, loving the fact I’m in pain, and I began to wonder – Why the hell do I do this?? I’m a small bodied person. I’ve been the same weight for the past ten years (except during pregnancy) and although I’m getting a little meatier around the edges, I’m not really a bad size.

Shouldn’t I sit back and enjoy my size? Shouldn’t I take advantage of my currently great metabolism and relax? Shouldn’t I enjoy my good fortune for the sake of those who aren’t so lucky?

My exercise obsessed husband doesn’t seem to think so, but every time I work out and my legs become jelly after merely a few minutes I begin to ask myself those same questions again and again.