Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Sweating is good.

So, I work out five times a week, an hour each time. This is merely a fact, so don't think I'm boasting. I work at a gym, which undermines my first statement, I suppose...it's hard to be in a more motivated place than here, watching hundreds of rock-hard bodies walk by eight hours a day.

I've come to a lot of realizations about health throughout the last 10 months since I've been coming here. The most important of which is IT'S NOT WORKING OUT UNLESS YOU'RE SWEATING!!! I'm not a health genius, but it is IMPOSSIBLE to talk on the cell phone, read a book, or study for a test while TRULY working out. And you can always tell the people that are really into it...they look like they're dying.

(I recently discovered that this is actually based in scientific fact- when your heart rate is at your Anaerobic Threshold- the optimum point to burn fat and strenghten your heart, you reach a point where it becomes much harder to say more than a few words at a time, you're sweating like a pig, and you feel like you're going to die...yet you are at the perfect BPM.)

My favorite is when I see people bounce down the stairs from the cardio floor after about 30 minutes, just as perky as ever, not a glisten of sweat anywhere on their body, make-up and/or hair still in picture-perfect place, and their brand-new Calvin Klein 3-piece track suit hardly wrinkled. These people, you can be sure, have just spent a very relaxing 20 minutes on the treadmill. Now, there's nothing wrong with that; in fact, it's encouraged! But you KNOW they're going to go home and tell everyone they went to the gym and "worked-out."

Alas, I suppose it's these people that don't really need to sweat like a pig to fit into their new track suit...it all balances out, I suppose.

4 comments:

Thursday said...

My favorite health-related comment comes after I say something like, "I shouldn't be eating this fat-filled food item" or "I should really exercise more." The comment is: "You don't need it! You're already thin!" Which of course betrays the prevailing notion that health is about how you look, not about, oh, how HEALTHY you actually are. My arteries could be clogging up, my kidneys could be failing, but, hey, I'm small. Whoo-hoo.

So those people in the great track suits look cute when they leave. Big deal. They may have massive coronaries building up as we speak...type.

Hm. I need to sweat more.

Morgan said...

So you WORK at a gym now? I remember you and I making fun of all the guys who took it way too seriously in weight training class. Was that how it all started? Did I plant the seed of weight training in you because of my granite-chiseled body?

Beth said...

Morgan, I can only think one thing when I see those rock-hard washboard abs walking by...I miss Morgan and our days at the Calvin weight room. Truly, it was you and our epic sets that inspired this career choice.

That said, I remember a few times one (or both) of us asked "Doesn't this machine go any lighter?"

Morgan said...

Yeah probably. Although I still laugh when I think of the "hey, do you think I could lift that?" with the leg crunch machine when I lifted like 550 pounds? Remember that? When I couldn't walk for like 5 days?