Psychology: Exercise

Since as long as I can remember, hubby has been craving a treadmill.  But not just any treadmill.  Nay verily, the treadmill that he coveted is the biggest, baddest, and most feature-laden treadmill on the market.  Oh, excuse me --it's not a treadmill; it's an incline trainer.  At first I laughed at him for it - who in the world would want to treadmill-ize uphill and downhill?  But then he explained the features to me and its benefits, and so guess what?

We got one.

And I gotta admit, it is one sexy piece of exercise machinery.  It has Google Maps built into its built-in Wifi connection so you can literally "hike" anywhere in the world.  I could jog in Paris if I wanted to.  All on a treadmill.  It has trainers built into it.  It will automatically incline and decline according to the "terrain" you've selected.  It has regimens built in for weight loss, competition, marathon training, and probably a whole heck of a lot of other things I can't even begin to fathom.

I'm addicted.  No, seriously.  I actually have used the thing, of my own free will and voluntarily and all that stuff.  Twice in one day, in fact (yesterday).  I am becoming an exercise addict, despite my processed-couch-potato nature.  Determination has set in to get rid of my belly (it's significant) and get some definition to my cankles.

Yesterday I got one-third of the way through one of the trainer workouts, and then just alternated between jogging and walking at 3 mph until I had burned 350 calories.  I was proud.  Today, I got to 126 calories and had to stop.  But I did go for 3 of the 4 miles of the dog-walk today (each lap around our dwelling area is a mile).

And my legs?  Oh, they hurt.  They gloriously ache, burn, throb, and protest against this amazing activity.  But I discovered something that I never really believed existed until I experienced it for myself:

endorphins.