They say the key to maintaining your weight and waistline (or in my case, butt-line!) is as simple as burning off as much calories as you take in. That makes sense. That sounds straightforward enough.
Eat more, exercise more. Exercise less, eat less.
Like a barter system for your body.
Except, in my case, it's really not that fair. Well it doesn't feel that way, anyway! It feels like I need eat less than what I burn off just to be able to keep sliding comfortably into my jeans. For freaks like me to maintain physical equilibrium, the output must outweight the input.
Sometimes I'm convinced that my body extracts all the fat from everything I eat and, like a good little factory, manufactures more from that--kind of like yoghurt culture. Stir some culture into a tub of warm milk and voila! yoghurt the next morning. Stick some fat into a conducive environment and voila! an extra inch on the hips the next morning.
Le Sigh.
So what do you do? You enjoy yourself when you eat, then you try to work it off. But even if you are a normal person--one who isn't blessed with a tapeworm or some other parasite, one who isn't cursed with a body that is constantly trying to pad itself out for some imminent war--the problem persists: food carries much more calories than most of us are able to burn off.
Eat one cookie, and you have to walk briskly for an hour. Have a hamburger, and you have to run for an hour. Have a caeser salad with chicken and a side of wedges, and you have to go for an aerobics Step class. Twice.
And me, I hate running. I think my body is just not made for running. I can use the cross-training machine, I can do weights and other toning/resistance exercises, I can cycle, dance, use the Fitball, swim. I can endure the grossness of sweating, the shortness of breath, the head-swimming nausea, the burn of lactic acid pooling in my muscles. But I cannot, cannot run 400 meters without feeling like I'd rather rip my guts out and get it over with already! Luckily, I have bum knees -I actually see a physiotherapist for them - and they always get me out of running.
On the downside, running is one of the most effective ways to burn calories. But:
Is it really worth it?
When you're eating and thinking "God I love smoked salmon so much I could bathe in it!" , the answer is "Hell yeah, biznitch."
When your muscles are screaming, the stitch in your side is stretching out its tentacles of hate, and you feel like your heart's going into cardiac arrest, the answer is "That's it! I'm going to live off carrot sticks!"
Or, you know. For those very confident people out there, the answer is "I don't exercise anyway. If I was meant to be a Chubb then so be it. In the meantime I'mma gonna enjoy myself!" I envy you. I am nowhere near comfortable enough in my own skin to live by that philosophy.
I'll tell you about my Lipo Fund another day.
