For the love of all things chocolate

Last night, I lounged in my recliner reading Women’s Health while eating a Heath Bar. Ah, the irony – reading about fitness while fattening my ass.

But it got me thinking about the whole workout/nutrition/body composition situation. One of the biggest reasons I exercise is to eat. And by eat, I mean food I love. Like wedding cake. Or cheese dip. Pizza. A protein shake is not food; it’s a punishment.

I love food, always have. You know those people that say they “forget” to eat? Huh? That’s incomprehensible. I’ve forgotten to bring my lunch to work a couple times, but it wasn’t on purpose. And I still managed to eat. (Popcorn, oatmeal and a Twix make a perfectly fine lunch.)

Even as a kid, I was a huge eater. My dad nicknamed me Horse after I literally made myself sick eating roast beef and mashed potatoes. His comment went something like; “I hope you’re always into sports because you sure eat a lot.”

It stuck. At 37, I’m still a big eater. (According to Boyfriend, the biggest eater he’s ever dated. Awesome.) Fortunately I still work out. An extreme version of this is actually an eating disorder – diligently tracking calories and making sure exercise burns them all off. I’m not this extreme, mostly due to laziness. Tracking calories is tedious.

To be clear, there are many workouts I love just for the activity itself. Swimming. Yoga. Short runs. Saturday morning bike rides. But then there are those 60-minute sessions on the elliptical that are good for nothing more than calorie burn. I would like to make a sweeping statement like “Never again!” regarding this type of workout. But it would be a lie. And if I lie on my blog, it will be on the Internet to haunt me forever.

There’s no tidy way to wrap this up. No behavior will change. I pledge undying love to all candy bars and cheese items. I still plan to workout. But maybe I’ll cut down my elliptical time. Just a couple of minutes.

Comments

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