fun

My life experience has brought me face to face with one of life’s greatest dilemmas.

I shall call it, for a lack of better terms, the cycle of fatness.

You see, this is how the cycle begins.  First, you eat.  This is simple enough.  I am actually a certified professional in this field.  If you need professional advice on what you should be eating, you should be coming to me.  Surgeon General’s Warning: Strictly following my advice can result in obesity, diabetes, unpopularity, and in most cases, death.

After a period of such eating, there will be the need to counteract all the deliciousness.  This can stem from a variety of reasons – body image consciousness, a significant other, health issues, or just plain difficulty getting from the bed to the couch to watch TV without being complete exasperated.  Let’s not even discuss any kind of side route to the kitchen for a snack.

So, in order to fulfill such need, you decide to hit the gym.  A noble decision indeed!  You throw on some exercise clothes, grab your iPod or an alternative non-Communism-supporting portable media device, strap on some running shoes, and you feel like you’re ready to take on the world and pare down your collection of stretchy pants.

At this juncture, one of three things will happen.

1) You will go to the gym, walk inside, and be completely intimidated by all these crazy medieval torture devices.

2) You will go to the gym, only to find that the place you pay an exorbitant amount of money for on a monthly basis has been rented out for something ridiculous like a high school swim meet leaving you with nowhere to park and excessively high blood pressure from your wasted dollars.  In your fury, you head home and/or your nearest cheeseburger purveyor and eat away the anger. (note: this has only happened to me twice.)

3) Someone calls you to see if you’re ready to throw down all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue.  Federal law dictates that it is a felony not to comply.

It becomes obvious that the cycle comes around full circle if situations #2 or #3 were to occur.  That was easy.

But what if you find yourself in situation #1?

You feel like your very presence in this mausoleum of calories is already the victory that you came to reach.  You stroll through the gym convincing yourself that you totally belong there with your unwaivering confidence.  Any fear is masked under a guise of looking at no direction in particular, yet avoiding eye contact with anyone and everyone.  You hope and pray that something – anything – looks even vaguely similar to the gym equipment you have in your prized virtual mansion as a result of countless hours of The Sims 3.  Finally, out of the corner of your eye, you see something that is both recognizable and not so daunting..

A bike!  It looks bolted down pretty well, so there’s really not much risk in finding yourself careening uncontrollably at that somewhat cute girl/guy that you tried not to stare at as you walked in.  Besides, you learned how to ride a bike when you were a kid, and you never forget, right? RIGHT?!

Hop on that familiar machine, you fitness guru you.  What’s this?  Buttons and screens and lights?  While unlike the Huffy you used to cruise the mean neighborhood streets with, you leverage your adept logical reasoning skills to master this technological behemoth in front of you.

Start!  The only button you really needed to press, because let’s face it, you totally lied on your weight for calorie calculations and maybe even your age if you got that desperate.  You take off pedaling, reliving both your bicycle-based adventure-seeking youth and your equally blissful dream of donning the yellow jersey at the Tour de France.

Wiping sweat off your brow, you take a big swig of water from your newly purchased “This may be overpriced but it proves I really work out a lot” water bottle.  The intensity is so high at this point that you wonder if it’s bad form to just pop open the top and douse yourself with the rest of the water.  You glance over at fellow cyclers near you, giving them a sly grin as your imagination visualizes them as competitors on a winding mountain road.  You know you have to keep pressing on as they’re neck and neck with you, though that probably has a lot to do with how the gym sets these machines side-by-side in a line.

Muscles aching, you look forward to the end of this strenuous workout, thinking about the washboard abs you’ll have to show off once you get off this devil-possessed machine.  Eventually, your legs give out from under you and you collapse onto that blinking, taunting screen, with the following blurry text scrolling across your now-somehow-tired eyeballs.

Elapsed Time: 2:30
Remaining Time: 27:30
Calories: 14
Average Heart Rate: 184

Awesome.  Simply awesome.  Your hard work can now be rewarded.  No, MUST be rewarded.  You drag your tired body back to the car, thinking about what to reward yourself with.  A new TV?  Hmm, no.  A new car?  Eh.  A new water bottle?!  Maybe.

Then suddenly, it comes to you.

As you shout your order through that drive-thru speaker box, you sense that sweet gratification that this double cheeseburger is going to be 14 less calories than usual.