NY TIMES 3/27/08: Personal Best: Running Can Make You High
This article gives me something to strive for. Don’t get me wrong… It’ll be a long time before I can run without looking like a freak being as out of shape as I am, but this actually does explain a lot about why I see people at my gym hitting the hour and a half mark running at a good seven miles an hour and I’m casually walking at about three and a half, desperately trying not to count down by the second till my time has ended. I’ve never really enjoyed exercise. Even when playing basketball in grade school, while I was good and enjoyed the game, I never enjoyed running my behind down the court and back. In the middle of the article, this quote brings immeasurable hope:
For athletes and nonathletes alike, the results are opening a new chapter in exercise science. They show that it is possible to define and measure the runner’s high and that it should be possible to figure out what brings it on. They even offer hope for those who do not enjoy exercise but do it anyway. These exercisers might learn techniques to elicit a feeling that makes working out positively addictive.
That is exactly what I need to actually stay on my goals. This kind of research, while it doesn’t seem to cure cancer or Alzheimers, definately has the very real potential to help the millions of overweight unenthused dieters constantly grappling with their issues of lack of confidence, self-doubt, and a downward spiral of failure that could have started years earlier.
So, while I’m spilling the beans and being totally honest. Here are my issues:
1. I really love food. I enjoy my pallet being sensationalized by combinations of spices, fresh fruits and savory carbs. I am in a love/hate relationship with potatoes. I love going to new restaurants and testing out exotic flavors, and I also enjoy going down to the local pub and scarfing down potato skins and cream of crab soup. Maybe if everything tasted like cardboard, it would be better for me and one in every four Americans.
2. I have an oral fixation. I am always craving to be drinking or eating something. I also stress eat. People who quit smoking notice their oral fixations quickly when they suddenly gain thirty pounds by letting go of their cigarettes. I’ve never been able smoke, thank heavens, because of allergies to several leafy greens, including spinach and tobacco. But that doesn’t mean that when I wasn’t out studying on a porch in college, I didn’t want one. I never realized until then when I thought to myself, damn, I could use a cigarette to do something other than reading. It was then I realized that I could simply bring along with me a snack and that craving was satisfied. Hell, now that I know about it, I’ve always wondered why candy companies just can’t make potato chip flavored gum, because then I can enjoy something other than sweet foods and spit it right back out without being accused of bulemia.
3. I don’t enjoy exercising. For me, the hour I’m on the treadmill is hopefully an episode of whatever TV show I’ve downloaded from iTunes onto my iPhone and only sixteen minutes of gruelling counting down to when the machine turns itself off. If I could walk still enough to concentrate on a book, that would be one thing, but I’ve never been able to manage to read and exercise at the same time. I can’t read and drive at the same time, but maybe that is a good thing afterall. I do enjoy swimming. I specifically joined a gym with two pools, one for the kids, and a small lap pool. Fortunately the lap pool isn’t overcrowded with semi-pro swimmers, but usually old ladies walking. I enjoy being the youngest there, and I enjooy going even just slightly faster than the old ladies. The only big problem there: I hate seeing myself in a swim suit. And shopping for one is even worse.
4. My current work schedule. I just changed jobs and am now working in Virginia. But my home and my gym are in the suburbs of Baltimore, and even then there’s a fifteen minute difference. I’ve got to get a schedule down that I can actually enjoy (and avoid traffic one way or the other!) and just simply plan it in. This weekend I’m hoping to really sit down and figure it out.
5. Partners. I don’t know whether I want a partner or not. On the one hand, if I have a partner, I feel obligated not to watch my iphone movies and acutally talk… Maybe one in five times I exercise I might want to chat, but most of the time I expect I’d be silent (and that is a rare thing for me at all!) Secondly, I’d have to work around someone else’s schedule. My own success depends on getting up and going to the gym WHENEVER I feel the urge, and I would be less likely to go if I normally have a partner and he/she couldn’t make it. I’ve got to overcome my own inertia to going to the gym, and I need the total freedom to do so. But the big sinch on this issue is accountability. On the one hand, it might motivate me more to be held accountable for reasonable successes, like going to the gym when I don’t want to because I have a scheduled exercise date with my partner. Hopefully that person will also be the motivation for me to succeed becuase they celebrate every little success. But, on the other hand, I might become resentful that I should be held accountable to someone else, and I really don’t take criticism when it comes to my own health very well. If I get scolded even once for missing a gym date, I’d feel horrible. So horrible in fact it would actually enable me to cancel the partnership altogether rather than motivate me not to let the partner down. It may not make sense, but then again, I never claimed to be sane. This is about as crushingly honest as I’ve ever been concerning my weight issues. I’ve even tried, and failed at online communities of like minded people also trying to overcome obesity. Part of me wants to open up because of the potential for some really good motivation, but most of me wants to keep it all to myself because of the horrible meanness of the general population. No doubt, if anyone comments on this entry, one will inevitably be “you fat ass pig, etc. etc. etc.” and demean my entire honesty. Then that will the last you hear of my struggle. period.
anyways, I originally wrote this blog entry to share a NY Times story, but it made me think, and it made me share, so that’s that for now.
(oh, and PS: The avatar is of Eowyn, a shield maiden of Rohan and kickass warrior from Lord of the Rings. She was in wicked amazing shape in order to defeat the Witchking of Angmar, and she would be my personal role model for getting in shape. 
)
Do you dare IM Me?::
Pensive
What I am going deaf listening to::
nuttin’ honey
What I am enriching my mind with::
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out ~ Richard Feynman
