Fitness and fakers

Clare Atherton, a nurse, was depressed by the fact that she was overweight. But she had conceived a course of action: she would begin running regularly. Not only would it help her lose those extra pounds, but it would refresh her and really do her some good.

She had decided to go running every Tuesday night after work. On the first Tuesday, she felt nervous but excited. And once she was out jogging, along the promenade overlooking the seaside where she lived, it really was refreshing, God it was good! It was a little difficult at first but once you got into it, it was manageable. She ran at a steady jog, her face absorbed and concentrated as she ran.

When she got home she felt great: renewed, relieved, alive! She viewed herself in the mirror. She hadn’t lost any weight yet, but it would be silly if she had. No, she wanted to do this properly, to do it regularly, and not just hope for quick and easy solutions. Plus, she wasn’t just doing it to get slim. It was also for the purity of it, to feel yourself cleansed. She promised herself that when next Tuesday came, she’d be out there doing it again, even though she knew it would require energy and discipline.

However the next Tuesday, she felt tired, lacklustre and run down after work. She had been on her feet all day, she felt stressed out by work, stressed by the thought of going out running in the freezing cold and wet, she felt a cold coming on, it was getting darker outside these days, Autumn was set to begin, and she fancied staying indoors and snuggling up in front of the TV and fire. Nevertheless, despite all this, she made the effort and forced herself to do it. It was bloody hard and awful at first, the cold bit into her, the exercise was stressful, painful and nasty and it made you want to scream. However, when she got home she felt relieved and renewed once more.

‘I didn’t think I had the strength to do it, but I did. It’s so cold out there, so dark and gloomy, but if you just embrace the elements, take them on, and don’t fear them, it is so relaxing and purifying to get out of doors. God I feel on top of the world, as though I have no problems. I could face anything now. And the second time is always the most difficult. I can do this every week now, I know it.’

Yet when next week came it was just the same, she felt terrible again, in fact worse since her cold had developed, and though she knew she should go out, her spirit failed her. She was desperate to be out jogging, but it was too much for her, it was simply too stressful to go running, in the cold, dark night after a hard day’s work. She knew it was wrong to opt out but knew also that she didn’t have the strength: the seine option was to drop out.

She had a cosy night in with her boyfriend, at first feeling relieved and off the hook at having skipped her run, and she spoke with him cheerfully, talking with a mixture of joy, guilt and falsity.

‘Well you’re probably wondering why I’m not going running tonight. But I have a cold. I’m going do some sit ups later on. They’re better for losing weight. Anyway let’s go and watch some telly.’

She absorbed herself happily in her soaps, but later in the evening after they’d finished, she felt depressed and wished she’d gone out jogging.

‘I so wish I’d gone out jogging, yet it’s far too difficult, it’s icy cold out there and running is murder, it’s not interesting or enjoyable, it’s pure torture. Surely there has to be an alternative, something that I could look forward to a bit more and have enthusiasm for.’

She knew she was seriously unhappy, and settled down to have a think about her options. She could run in a group, with others. That would make it a lot easier. But then she hated the idea of it becoming a competition and was scared that it would descend into such in a group. It would be bitchy and competitive. She wouldn’t be strong enough. Well, perhaps she could run on the weekend, during daylight hours. That way she could concentrate on work during the week, and jogging on the weekend. Yet she foresaw that it would spoil her weekend. It would be depressing to do it on Sundays, and difficult if she’d been out on a Saturday night. The same was true of Saturdays. If she ran on Saturday morning’s, it would spoil Friday night and she couldn’t have a lie in. Or, if she ran in the evening, she wouldn’t be able to relax all day Saturday. No, whenever she scheduled it, it came at the wrong time. It all seemed so difficult. However, later on, a plan began to form in her head. She went on the internet. Finally, she spoke to her boyfriend.

‘Darling I think we should join a gym. I’ve been looking on the internet, there’s a really nice one only ten minutes away. They’ve got a spa, a sauna and a swimming pool as well and also a bar to go to afterwards. It’s only four hundred pounds a year, and by paying all that we’ll feel obliged to go, we’ll use it regularly, it will force us to get fit.’

So they joined a gym. Her boyfriend was keen on the idea as well; he fancied loosing some pounds and he’d recently seen some images of brawny muscle-men and an idea was germinating in his mind, that he might, in a few months time, if he trained regularly, look like them.

So they both went to a gym, and Clare was pleased by it all. She could sit on an exercise bike for twenty minutes, and, if the pleasant environment of the gym, the people and the music, were not a sufficient backdrop for her to pass the time, then she could always read a book – killing two birds with one stone – to while away the time. No, after a hard day's work this was a civilised way to exercise.

One girl caught Clare’s eye. She was a beautiful, slim, black haired girl, with a slender body and the most magnificent, haughty features. She was the perfect specimen, and looked perfectly at home in the gym, the queen of it, gallivanting around, exercising on all the different machines and wearing a very fetching leotard outfit, with fashionable trainers, head band and sweat bands.

Clare wished she could be like that girl, she was so slim and elegant, so chic, fashionable and sporty. She was the essence of all that Clare desired to be and she observed her wistfully.

This girl had the most handsome boyfriend, a hunk of a man, wearing a sleeveless top to expose his biceps and he wore all the gear as well, looking like a professional sportsman. He exercised at the weights section next to Clare’s boyfriend, and he was in awe of this amazing athlete, and would fain be him. He was so well toned and muscular.

As Clare and her husband drove home they were each silent and lost in their own reflections, dreaming of being this brilliant female and brilliant male respectively, of going to the gym, looking the part, appearing sleek, sexy and toned and right at home.

Meanwhile that girl and her boyfriend were driving home too.

‘Did you see that fat cow staring at me? I don’t know what her problem is. People like that shouldn’t bother going to the gym. They should just stop eating so many pies and get off their fat arses and do some exercise. All she was doing was sitting on a bike! The lazy cow.’

Her boyfriend, gormless, acknowledged this statement, looking ahead on the road as he drove.

She had a magnificent, lioness’s face, but it bore a constant look of dissatisfaction, as if she was perpetually unhappy. She was a complete faker, feckless, lazy and useless. She didn’t work for a living. She had the most exquisitely slim and beautiful body, but that had been given to her by nature and she did just about no exercise at all. She had an awful diet, ate junk food excessively, would have a Turkish delight bar and a can of coke for breakfast, but she never put on weight at all. She believed she stayed slim because of rigorous exercise, and she always had a bad word for fat people and said they were lazy and hopeless, and should exercise more.

She went around telling people she was very keen on exercise, that she went to the gym three times a week. Actually her visits to the gym were desultory, amounting to a few haphazard visits per month. She always dressed up in the most alluring of outfits, wearing all the branded gear, and spent half an hour in front of the mirror preparing beforehand. When she was there she never broke into a sweat or got her heart pumping, nor did she go there with any real aim of doing so. She simply went in a lacklustre manner, paying more attention to her appearance and never getting psyched up. When she was there she would get on an exercise bike for a few minutes of non-intense exercise; then a treadmill for a couple of minutes, then a rowing machine; she lifted a dumbbell a few times in front of the mirror, then went and lay on her back, doing yoga and stretching, always bouncing stupidly on the stretches; she would employ a preying mantis position and close her eyes and ‘meditate’ for a few minutes; or use a ball to do a fake sit up; or she went and sat at a machine and exercised obscure muscles like the adductors. And during all this time if you saw her, she bore an unhappy, narcissistic face, and scowled at people.

She was heavily into yoga, meditation and Pilates, though she had no idea of what they were, and she would buy mats, balls and candles and sit in her home pretending to be spiritual, and to meditate. Her boyfriend was the male version of herself: he was useless at sport and had simply been born with the body he had, although people always imagined that he worked out all the time. He didn’t have the discipline to exercise, nor either the physical strength – his arms for example were fairly weak, though they looked so strong. He avoided running and all cardio vascular exercise, simply working in the weights area. He would pick out a big weight and try and lift it two or three times. After which he’d tense his muscles and stare at himself in the mirror. Then he’d take a swig from his branded bottle and walk off somewhere. Five minutes later he would return and lift another weight four or five times. And as he did this he would make loud, aggressive noises, seeking attention and trying to tell everyone else in the gym how difficult it was, and how he was such a macho man. In fact it was all rather pathetic.

They would often go to modern art galleries together, again looking the part, as though they were cultivated artists, and view the ‘art’. The girl said that the point of art was to make you think and always said that she came away ‘thinking’ after viewing the exhibits.

They went on cheap flight weekends to cultural cities like Venice, Paris and Prague and even though this only amounted to going there, drinking, eating, enduring boring journeys from A to B, rushing around from one tourist spot to another, being rude to and taking no interest in the natives, unable to speak the lingo as they were; as well as a good measure of petit bickering, bitching and being out of humour, still, they believed they were very cultured for wasting their money in this way. Today they were on board a flight, headed for Barcelona.

‘Look at that fat cow serving the drinks’ said the girl. ‘Why is she wearing that tight uniform? You can see her fat arse. It’s coming down the isle towards us.’ She took out some ‘flying bands’ that helped relieve travel sickness by focusing energy in the ‘essential spots’ in her wrists. She put them on.

‘Excuse me’ she called over the stewardess coming through with a trolley. ‘Do you have any bottled water?’

‘Yes I’ve got some bottles left I think’ and she pulled one out.

‘Don’t you have any with lemon in it?’

‘Err....I don’t think so…..’

‘It doesn’t matter then’ she said rudely, huffily blowing air out of her mouth.