Stars of Track and Field

Sometimes I wonder if people think there is a magical element in every workout facility that automatically burns calories for you from the time you walk in the door to the time you leave. Like a little fairy that looks like Julia Robert’s Tinkerbell character in Hook, only rather than Julia Roberts, it’s Jane Fonda or Cindy Crawford or Suzanne Somers with the wings and wand spitting out fairy dust that shapes your abs and masters your thighs as well as burns your calories. I would like to go on record here telling these people that there is NO FREAKING FAIRY! Not one that looks like Cindy, Jane, or Suzanne, not even one that looks like Billy Blanks or Richard Simmons. To burn calories, you must actually participate in a cardiovascular exercise (sometimes we shorten this to “cardio”). Just the activity of putting on workout clothes and “going to the gym” does not get the job done. An effective cardio workout does not consist of walking on the treadmill at 2 miles per hour for a half of an hour. For the math majors out there, that equates to 1 mile in 30 minutes. THIRTY MINUTES. Only ONE MILE. Not only are you wasting your own time, you are wasting my time as well. Time that I could be spending burning off the calories that I will be putting back in when I eat that Edy’s slow churned thin mint cookie ice cream later on during American Idol. But no, you are occupying one treadmill, and your daughter, who walks even slower than you and has to take breaks during her “workout” to do only God knows what because she surely does not need to catch her breath, is occupying the only other treadmill. Do you realize that I walk through the mall faster than that? Shoot, I walk faster than that when I am taking a leisurely stroll through the freaking woods. I probably burned more calories sitting here, typing this post, than you did last night on the treadmill. But the best part was when you finished your “workout” and wiped your “sweat” off your forehead while you did your “stretches”. Why don’t you do yourself and your family a favor by vacuuming or dusting or doing laundry at home instead of coming to the gym because I truly believe that all that would burn a heck of a lot more calories than what you burned on the treadmill.

I really need to suck up my cheapness and join a real gym.