CRUNCH TIME
Sarah-Kate feels cheated on her one trip to the gym
Ahappy life is really all about expectations, isn’t it? Limit those and you’ll be in a constant state of amazement. Let them get away on you and it’s a world of disappointment.
I was reminded of this the other day when I made a rare appearance at the gym, which in itself is an exercise in expectation.
For example, I expect that I will go to the gym five times a week. I belong to two of them, so you’d think it would work out. Instead, I go to the gym once a week if I’m lucky and spend the other six days feeling bad about it. But if I adjusted my compass so I only expected to go once a week, how great that would feel!
I hadn’t thought of that when I was on the crosstrainer one recent Saturday. I don’t love the cross-trainer. I don’t love anything at the gym except the endorphin rush.
But as I swished and steamed my way to nowhere on the sweaty contraption, my mind turned to the ginger crunch at the local health food shop. I’ve ogled it countless times but never weakened. This day, though, I did a deal with myself: stay on the crosstrainer for an extra 20 minutes and you can treat yourself to a piece of that slice.
By the end, I could all but taste it. I had the icing/slice ratio worked out perfectly in my head. I flew out of the gym, grinning from ear to ear (not pretty when you’re already salivating slightly), ran to the health food shop and stopped in my tracks. “Closed.”
My deal with myself was a dud. I swear, being that disappointed actually burns extra calories. But I was only interested in ingesting calories at that point and my plans to do so had turned to dust.
The sad taste in my mouth reminded me of a similar lesson in abject disappointment from more than two decades ago, which still similarly haunts me to this day. It was a Sunday morning. There was a hangover involved. I had arranged to meet a friend for a long walk to a west coast beach but had forgotten to bring any water.
“It’s OK,” I told my friend. “There’s a little caravan that sells drinks and bite-sized comestibles in the car park.”
The thought of the drinks and comestibles was all that got me there. But then we arrived to find out I had my beaches muddled up and the only caravan at this one had someone who lived in it and didn’t feel like sharing. The horrors have never been so dry.
Plus it was an hour’s walk, uphill, to get back to the car. When we passed some far more clever walkers carrying a two-litre bottle of orange juice, my pal had to stop me from pushing them down the bank so I could loot them.
The moral of the story is: to avoid disappointment, expect to keep ginger crunch and something to wash it down with somewhere about your person. Or the person next to you.