DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

If you’ve lived long at all, you know about inertia. Or maybe, if you don’t remember physics class, you think of it as momentum. Either way, the concept I’m referring to is that it’s easier to keep something moving than to start it again after it stops.

I consider this when I’m packing my gym bag. You see, I don’t very much enjoy going to the gym. I’ve been doing it three times a week for 17 months, and I readily admit exercise has changed my life. I don’t dread going, but it’s not something I particularly look forward to. It’s sort of like brushing my teeth — mostly I’m afraid of what would happen if I stopped.

Still, with all the post-move craziness around here lately, I’ve missed a few workouts. Thanks to inertia, the missing gets easier with each miss (or, more accurately, the restarting gets harder). And so lately I’ve been pushing myself to get back onto a regular gym schedule, before I end up guilty and corpulent, with a 3/4-lb burger in one hand, a greasy smear on the chin, and a thought balloon reading, “You shouldn’t have missed that first workout,” and another thought balloon reading, “Could you pass me a Soytzel?”

I was relieved to learn that my brief neglect did not have an immediate impact on my weight: I’d taken a week off, ostensibly to unpack but really to mope around the new house, lamenting my dial-up connection and sensing the entire digital world flowing by, just beyond the reach of my pitiful 28.8k analog connection… and when I went back to the gym the next week I found I’d somehow lost three pounds, leaving me at a 20-year low, at which point a stiff wind threatened to blow me off my deck and I scurried inside and quickly baked up a batch of focaccia for 40.

How did I lose weight after I stopped exercising? Perhaps I’ve reset my metabolism. Or perhaps it’s that box of Dexa-Trim I choke down at breakfast every day*.

Anyway, I’m back into a sort of transient workout schedule again, while I cope with some high-pressure work projects and a body full of toxins left by the season’s harvest parties. (I actually ingested goat, which — I checked — is not a vegan dish, I regret to say. Don’t tell my colon.)

*A note for the sarcasm-impaired: I don’t really eat speed for breakfast, unless Trader Joe’s puts in it the granola. No, fructose doesn’t count.