The choice to be fit

Life is full of choices. One of these choices is to be fit or unfit.

I guess that time has come that I am sick and tired of being unfit. In case you don't know me in real life and think that I am a fat sloth, well, that's 50% correct. I am somewhat a sloth - I am lazy beyond words when it comes to exercising. I am not fat though. This is because I watch what I eat. No, I don't count calories (trust me, I do enough counting on a daily basis that if I can avoid not counting, I would choose that any day).

And no, I am not one of those people who would do things in the name of charity either - like, err... running the marathon to raise money for some organisation, or cycling for the benefit of children's cancer society (if there's ever such a thing). I applaud those who do this, I have enough Facebook notifications from my friends who want me to support them in these. I am just not doing this right now. Will I do it in future? I don't know. I don't really have anything against it, at least not right now anyway.

So today, for some reasons that I am yet to comprehend, I went running. Actually, it started yesterday when I decided to sign up for the firm's JP Morgan competition. What the fuck was I thinking?

Because every single person who subsequently found out of that fact were looking at me in disbelief. They are very familiar with my aversion to exercise and they just cannot believe that (1) I have signed up for the comp, and (2) started training this afternoon.

What I was thinking was that I think it is time that I take my health seriously. You know, now that I am on the verge of turning 30, maybe, I should start getting serious about fitness. MAYBE I should start taking some form of responsibility for my health and my well being. And maybe, just maybe, I want to look better than I do now. *blush

So I had my first training session today courtesy of my boss and my work mate. In short, I felt shit and I hated every moment of it and I remember why I have the aversion to exercise in the first place. I don't understand why people want to put themselves through all of that. Such torture. Who actually do these things voluntarily???

I am a very lucky person. I had so much encouragement and praises and I have people who told me that I did a great job even when I felt I did a crappy job, in addition to feeling really shit about the whole thing. I was not even a nice person - I cannot be nice when I am exercising. I cannot be nice when I am doing something that I loathe with a vengeance. (Ok, maybe I can, but that takes so much self control and discipline, and those things were used up to just simply keep breathing, otherwise I might die, you know.)

Anyway, point of the story is that I am of view that sometimes in life, we have to do things that we do not like because these things are supposedly good for us. For me, right now, that thing is exercising. To enable me to do this, I enlist help left, right and centre, and I have people who are happy to run with me. Maybe that's because they have not run with me yet. I should ask running companions today if they would run with me again. (Please say yes. I will be good*. I promise.)

*good is defined as running more and walking less.

One of the ways I enjoy life is to immerse myself in beauty. This can take many forms - usually it comes in the form of beautiful people. You know, like Anne Hathaway, the Catwoman in the Dark Knight Rises. She's gorgeous right? I know!! That body is a lot of work, okay. She just made it look so effortless because she is paid millions to look like that. I mean, seriously, if someone is paying millions to look like that, maybe I will be more motivated to exercise and diet.

The hardest thing about exercising (for me) is not so much the exercise itself, although I might have given you that impression. The hardest thing is dieting, ok, terrible word. It is more like watching what I eat. I get more hungry, I crave carbs and when I get fatigued, all I want to do is swallow sugar. This is why, I think, exercise can make you fat. This is especially hard for me because even when I don't exercise, I am always hungry. Exercise exacerbates that feeling.

I feel so screwed, really. On one hand, I do want to get fit, and on the other hand, I do not want to get fat. I think one of the worst things in this planet is to be fat (this does not apply to pregnant women). I still don't know why I choose to exercise again (and risk being fat and being a nasty person at the same time). All I know is that this is hard and because it is hard, it must be worth doing.

Yes, that is some twisted logic. That was also the logic that I used to survive doctorate years, and it worked fine for that. If that was good enough for the doctorate, it should be good enough for life.