We've Got A Gym Membership And We're Gonna Use It

Oh sure, the thought had crossed my mind before. But after a shameless display of holiday eating, I felt the time was right. You know it's bad when relatives you seldom see tell you right away how much weight you've put on.

The facilities are available (cheaply) through my work. All I really need is a treadmill. Someone once told me that running is the key to keeping one's weight down, so that's what I'm going with.

I've had two sessions: yesterday and today. Now let me say, I know nothing about working out. I'd never exercised just for its own sake until now. It took me fifteen minutes just to figure out how to turn the machine on.

...so I've got it going, but how fast is fast enough? How long is long enough? Since I find difficult tasks easier when done in a routine, I made up the following: 2 minute brisk walk, 22 minute jog, 1 minute faster jog, 2 minute cool-down. I followed this pattern today, with slightly increased speeds all around. During this session I sometimes found myself thinking "I'm not gonna be able to do this"... but I did. I think I went about 2.2 miles... or maybe just kilometres, I'm not sure. I was pretty wiped by the end, but felt considerably less guilty taking the bus home instead of walking.

My impression is that it won't be hard to convince myself to do this regularly. It's not that much time out of my day and it's easy to do after work. I'm going to try not to weigh myself for a month, then see if any of this had an effect. I'd like to do it at least 5 times a week. That seems reasonable.

The title of this post was a reference to this band:



I own their first EP... a one sided 12" single with etchings of the band members on the back! Got it for a song years ago at...