Burn Baby Burn

My husband is looking at his stomach and wondering where all that hair came from. I’m looking at my stomach and wondering where all this stomach came from. We joined a gym. Lesson one about gym memberships: weight loss and beauty do not occur because you have paid the initiation fee. I’ve been working out like a demon although how an actual demon works out is anyone’s guess. But I can tell you, it does hurt like hell.

It is hard to reconcile how good I feel after working out – lithe, strong, relaxed- with the person who hobbles to the bathroom the next morning, my muscles shrunk to the size and elasticity of those blue rubber bands that keep lobsters from being able to open their claws. Who knew the spaces between the bones in my hands and feet could be filled with so much pain! Now if I could just stop eating!

I come home after 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer, 30 more on the treadmill, an animated ride on the stationary or recumbent bike through any one of ten virtual locations, and a circuit of machines designed to work every muscle in your body until it cries, and I am ravenous! I immediately start to prepare the healthy, low fat dinner I dreamed up while dripping so much sweat over the machines that I feared sparks would fly and the machine would explode. And while I wait, I nibble on cake and nuts and whatever is handy or at least not nailed down. But this is okay because by the time the healthy meal is ready I’m sort of full so it all evens out, right? No?

Seriously, it amazes me how easy it is to ingest 200 calories and how frigging hard it is to burn them off! There is no justice is this phenomenon. We are taught that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Where is the equality in having to kill yourself for three hours over one moment of culinary bliss?