There’s a war waging inside of me between the athlete and the couch potato. I was always fairly active and athletic growing up. I could run, jump, dance, and stunt non-stop for three or four hours straight and still have energry to do more. I was also really bookish and lazy at times. I could lie about in my bed reading a novel or two all day or watching TV without doing much else.

Up until about 10 years ago, I always managed to keep the two sides of me fairly balanced, and I somehow maintained a decent 10 or 20 pounds over the 100 mark. Over the last decade, however, having been lovingly and regularly fed veritable feasts and snacks by the Human Encyclopedia and having neglected any sort of regular exercise on top of that, I managed to reach 150 lbs. by 2005.

At 5′ 6″, 150 isn’t bad. It’s probably fairly average for a woman my age, and back when I had the day job, one of my co-workers would still regularly comment about how skinny I was. I also never wore anything bigger than a size 7, so there’s really nothing for me to obsess about when it comes to weight.

But 150, for me, was a significant threshold. That’s when I started to get serious migraines at an alarming frequency. That’s also when I realized that somewhere along the line, I had stopped taking the stairs two or three steps at a time. I was also sick and tired more often, and if I expended myself in any way, I was always out of breath.

It didn’t really hit me, though, until I went to Australia and sandboarded the dunes at Lancelin. Climbing those dunes were akin to a nuclear fire in my lungs, and the fire would die slowly, leaving me breathless for the longest time. Being 150 lbs. isn’t nearly so bad as having diminished lung capacity, so that’s when I knew I had turned into a couch potato.

I dread what would become of me if I let the couch potato win as I have never been a big fan of pain, but the natural laziness of my character makes it hard for me to resurrect the athlete in me. I tried visualizing my high school and college years, where just the first 5-10 minutes of what I considered to be an exhilirating warm-up to some hip-hop dancing fun would bring my mother down to a sweating, wheezing faint on the floor, the words “Never again! I’m dying here” on her parched and trembling lips. But no, I can’t imagine doing all the things I used to do with a casual ease. I’d be on that floor like my mother was, feeling as old as time because I couldn’t last through the first set in a simple little warm-up.

And that makes it even harder for me to get started. As an athlete, I had never wheezed, so the wheeze is the monster under my bed. I avoid getting even near it, if possible, which means I avoid pushing myself to exercise hard enough or long enough to start feeling a little bit out of breath.

So here I sit, unexercised. The couch potato is in the lead.

And the athlete? The athlete reminisces and dreams. This is what I used to be:

With any luck, the tide will turn sometime today. If I get off my butt and do at least 15 minutes on the treadmill before sundown, I’ll know the athlete has won a game, if not the tournament.

I’m at 131 today. But we’ll see how this season goes. If I ever get back down to 120 again without getting the flu or starving myself, I’ll know the athlete will have returned for good.

Share this post: