Why exercise? No, really, why?

I still don’t get the point of exercise, which is disappointing because you’d have thought that after plugging away faithfully(ish) for over a year, I’d be a bit more enthusiastic. Well, I’m not. It still a chore and a drag, and I only really do it so that I can smugly say that I have done it.

Granted, there are some advantages. It’s great at building up your stamina for sex, which is often useful (“I seem to have been administering this blowjob for a very long time in a rather awkward position… my lips have gone numb, but hey! my inner thighs are holding up, my back is fine, and there’s no problem with my neck… if it wasn’t for my morbid fear of dislocating my jaw again, I could carry on forever! Oh, thank God…”) and while I would punch anyone in the balls who suggested that I wasn’t fully flexible and the bendiest thing ever before I started doing bendy stuff with my clothes ON, I’ve noticed a marked tendency not to feel as though my joints are all facing the wrong way the next day (although obviously if you foolishly point this out to anyone, they will then double their efforts to pretzel you further, in the hopes that you will be staggering about the next day bandy-legged). And there are the muscles and general tonedness, which is quite nice, but I didn’t feel massively untoned beforehand. Even the thrill of having stomach muscles for the first time in my life is wearing off now.

I STILL don’t get that feelgood feeling about exercise – mainly I get the feelbad about putting my body through such torture. The only good thing is that I like my body more in the morning when I’ve exercised the day before, but even then I sometimes get confused and like it before I remember that I didn’t yoga (there’s nothing much going on in my brain in the morning until after coffee). Also, I can’t escape the feeling that I’d like my body all the time if it would just melt off a kilo without me having to give up roast potatoes. I STILL want a cigarette break halfway through, and I’m STILL only really motivated by competitiveness: when my best friend injured her thigh playing soccer and couldn’t train for a month, I felt it would be unfair to carry on without her, and then I was still sympathy-unexercising by the time she’d injured her ankle.

Now of course, a thought has occurred: maybe all that stuff about endorphins is rubbish? Maybe “endorphins” is just another word for smug? Oh, NOW I get it!