Some people live to exercise, others live to avoid exercise until they can no longer do up their pants. If you’re in the latter category, you might recognise the five stages of trying to get fit.
1. Denial
Even though you know
full well that your daily
routine lacks exercise,
you find yourself quoting Sex and
the City’s Carrie Bradshaw as if
she’s a bonafide fitness guru.
“Shopping is my cardio,” you tell
yourself on your daily supermarket
run and accompanying waft through
the shopping centre. You even start
to count steps on your iPhone so
you can include walking out to the
letterbox as part of your ‘fitness
regime’. At first glance, all the
graphs on the app look impressive.
2. Anger
As your daily step tally
and their unremarkable
numbers are put into
perspective by the recommended
target of 10,000 steps, the reality
emerges: shopping is not cardio
and you rarely break a sweat,
unless it’s to beat someone
else to the ‘further
reductions’ rack.
Why can’t squats and lunges be fun? Why? Why? Why?
Now you’re angry.
Angry with yourself
and angry with evolution:
if humans are so clever, why have we evolved to have a
sedentary lifestyle that is detrimental
to our own health and wellbeing?
Why can’t we bring back hunting
and gathering? Why can’t squats and
lunges be fun? Why? Why? Why?
3. Bargaining
The beginning of this
phase is signalled by
some psychological
wheeling and dealing. For example,
you won’t join a gym, but you will eat
smaller bowls of pasta. And in the
event that you do eat a big bowl of
pasta, you make a deal that you’ll
go for a 30-minute jog afterwards.
But the last time you tried to jog you
nearly had a heart attack. So you tell
yourself you’ll do the old ‘five-minute
bursts’ jogging/walking strategy.
This turns into five-second bursts
of running and a debilitating stitch.
4. Depression
Needless to say, the
jogging never happens.
Sometimes you don’t
even go for a walk because there’s
always a reason not to: it might rain,
it’s too hot, you’ve got a bit of a virus
and you don’t want to put a strain on your body. With a heavy heart, you
realise your fate is now inevitable.
You do the walk of shame to the front
desk of the local gym chain and
restart your membership. What is
really depressing about this phase is
the revelation that they never deleted
your membership in the first place:
you’ve been unknowingly paying the
fees for the past two years.
Reaching this stage
of acceptance is
a big-picture mindset.
It means accepting that human
beings now have to walk on the
spot in a room full of other humans
walking on the spot in order to keep
their muscles from atrophying.
We
also might have to do weird random
things such as circulate the ends
of dumbbells around our heads.
But it’s not so bad. After all,
you can get through a lot
of podcasts while you’re
on a treadmill.
Penny Flanagan is a writer and musician who lives in Sydney. She takes her duties as a consumer seriously and when she isn't writing or performing can often be found at her local shopping centre.
You can find her on LinkedIn.
Penny Flanagan is a writer and musician who lives in Sydney. She takes her duties as a consumer seriously and when she isn't writing or performing can often be found at her local shopping centre.
You can find her on LinkedIn.
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