My sad, lone dumbbell exactly where it belongs: hidden in a corner with the vacuum cleaner
Fitness? Let’s just say it’s not my favorite hobby.
Until college, I never thought about the concept of “working out” as an activity you actively do, like taking a class or scheduling a meeting.
I grew up dancing competitively, which meant spending every night and plenty of weekends at the studio taking class and rehearsing. I would eat cheeseburgers and pizza and twelve thousand mozzarella sticks and never think twice about “fitness,” because ballet classes with drill instructors straight off the boat from Russia have a certain way of keeping your thighs trim.
And then college (read: beer) happened.
I got acquainted with this thing called the elliptical machine that every sorority girl seemed to be in love with, but I never quite grasped the appeal. My roommate and I made a pact to jog to the gym every night and complete a full workout before jogging back home. That lasted exactly one night.
After college I finally felt like I hit my fitness stride when I started running, which was born from the burning itch to move after sitting at a desk for nine hours straight (I remember asking myself, am I really going to have to do this for the next 40 years?!).
I hated every single step of those runs up and down the Western Colorado hills with a passion, but running has this funny way of turning those normally-soft-and-jiggly parts of your body into these magic, not-so-jiggly-and-kind-of-great-looking parts, which I loved for my own vain reasons. Plus, much like ballet, it prevents things like pizza and cheeseburgers and mozzarella sticks from becoming lodged directly on your backside. I fucking hate running, but it does the body good.
And then I moved to New York. Suddenly I’m a fitness machine and I don’t even have to try.
I have a built-in stairmaster routine every time I enter my apartment building and climb the four flights of stairs up. Yes, I realize it’s four floors and not ten, but I swear it feels like 1000 and WHY DON’T YOU TRY IT INSTEAD OF TAKING THE ELEVATOR SOMETIME.
I turn into Usain Bolt on the subway platform when I’m on the verge of missing my train.
I body check dudes who are walking straight into me because they’re staring down at their phones instead of in front of their faces.
I’m a damn World’s Strongest Man competitor anytime I accidentally buy a gallon of milk and cat litter at the same time, dodging Broadway traffic while hauling that shit four blocks back to my building and then up the aforementioned stairs.
Biceps. Thighs. Calves. Glutes. I’m like a gym bro in soccer mom’s clothing on a daily basis.
One of many long walks with Bo
Since moving to New York, I have an insatiable appetite for carbs. LOL, okay, you caught me! My passion for bread and potatoes are nothing new. But I’m telling you, I now crave French fries as if I’m training for a trek through the Himalayas or getting ready to hibernate. I’ve gotta have them, all the time and everywhere.
My clothes fit looser, simply the result of schlepping my body and my belongings around the city anytime I need to go anywhere, ever. If anything, I’m eating crappier and working out less than ever before, but this city takes it out of you and damnit if I’m not enjoying its effects on my derriere.
I recently confided in friend—a longtime New York resident—about my new, trimmer physique acquired from adjusting to life in the city. She basically laughed in my face.
“Don’t get used to it,” she said.
She told me my body will eventually get acclimated to all the extra French fry fuel and start storing it away, to the detriment of my, ahem, assets. That’s pretty rude if you ask me, but she’s probably right.
For the moment, I’m enjoying this aspect of New York life—my state of perpetual carb-loading, subway-chasing, grocery-hauling and stair-climbing (with expletives at every floor), with no jogging or stairmaster or stupid elliptical machine in sight.
