Thank you, Life Fitness.

Late last night I was working on my fitness autobiography - a two page paper due this week for Life Fitness. I really did try to write a serious paper.... but I ended up with what Liz calls an "articulately flippant" paper, which I should probably not turn in, unless I want to fail the course. I thought, however, that my meager readership might enjoy it.

*AHEM!*
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Fitness Autobiography, by Mackenzie Martin

At one point, as long ago as three years, I was in fairly good shape. I was on a swim team, swam three times a week for an hour and a half, and carried out a regular schedule of dry-land exercises. Then, due to transportation problems, choosing to spend more time together as a family, getting a job, and the advent of a new hyper-competitive swim coach, I just didn't have time to work out anymore. I quit the swim team and became sedentary. Events have continued in this way until this semester, Spring 2005, when the advent of Life Fitness required me to work out at least three times a week - or else forfeit my comfortable GPA and therefore my scholarship. It's unlikely that anything less dramatic would have induced me to begin a campaign of fitness, but I nevertheless resent the intrusion of health-awareness into my nicely arranged life.

My present fitness level, as I've said, is not great. It lands on the negative side of sedentary. I do, however, climb three flights of stairs numerous times a day, and now I work out three times a week. Altogether, my fitness level is improving. I would like to see it continue to improve, obviously, since I don't intend to fail this course.

I know all the spiel about how great exercising is for your life. I even remember how it was - having a lot more energy, sleeping well at night, in general feeling happy with my body. Not that I'm unhappy with my body. It's a fairly nice body as bodies go, even if it has no muscle tone, and after all it's the only one I've got. I know that exercising regularly makes you hungry - thus promoting the eating of real food and not just junk food. Yes, exercising improves your nutrition. I know that exercising regularly would greatly help decrease my level of stress, which, these days, is quite high. I know, theoretically, that it would help clear my mind and might even be a benefit to my spiritual life, providing some extra meditative time to spend with God. The problem with knowing all this theoretically is that I'm not motivated to actually go out, exercise, and reap these benefits for myself. This knowledge only makes me vaguely dissatisfied, trying to bury the thought that I'm a lazy bum who will get fat and die of heart complications by the age of thirty.

With the advent of Life Fitness, however, a new thought has been added into the mix which gives me pause. The thought that I'm actually disobeying God's commands to be a good steward by neglecting to take care of my body is, admittedly, a disturbing one. I make a concerted effort to spend time with God each day, reading the Bible, studying it, and talking with Him. It may seem odd that, although I've been neglecting exercise for years because it's simply too much trouble (even though I know all the benefits I've listed above), the thought that obeying God might require exercise should bother me. It seems odd that it bothers me enough to almost bring about change in my exercising habits. I mean, I've neglected very obvious benefits, for, as I said, years. So why, now, does it suddenly strike me that being a good steward of my body is of importance to my faith? It's never particularly struck me that I need to go out and chain myself to trees in front of a bulldozer in order to be a good steward of God's creation, and it's never struck me that I need to live in a hovel in order to be a good steward of the resources God has given me. And yet, all of a sudden, I find myself of the persuasion that I need to throw myself in the pool three times a week and elevate my heart rate to a certain level in order to truly follow God's commands.

Thank you, Life Fitness. My faith is now complete.