On my hatred of exercise

Especially hiking...

I saw a meme this week that spoke to me at my core. It said:

I don’t know who needs to hear this but living your life to the fullest does not have to involve hiking.

Aha! Praise be! Amen! Amituofo! A light bulb went off in my head.

I’m sure I’ve vented about the “exercise is good for you” propaganda here before but I’m here to do it again.

I find hiking to be asinine (for me). No offense to pretty much all of my friends and loved ones to seem to think it’s the answer to all my problems. Sure, all the self-help / personal health / clean living gurus endless tout the benefits of walking meditations It’s just not for me. I mean I don’t mind “hiking” in an exotic location to do something fun or visit something interesting. But walking for the sake of walking? No thanks.

Today I realized that some of it might have to do with city living. Everyone else everywhere in North America drives. They don’t normally go walking unless they deliberately choose to do so. But I’m a Brooklynite and in NYC walking is a goddamn mode of transportation. When out-of-towners visit me they often get tired because of all the walking they’re forced to do. I walk so much that I’ve stopped noticing how much I walk. Last week we took the wrong street to get to a beer garden that resulted in me walking over 40 minutes with my almost 30lbs baby strapped to me. That’s just how it goes when you don’t have a car.

Hiking, by the way, was also a major reason why I hated living in Seattle. It’s a religion over there and it was the only thing anyone ever wanted to do. I’ve never been excommunicated from a community so fast as when I mentioned I didn’t like hiking during a cocktail party.

The older I get the more I am convinced that if we know if something is not right for us we should just listen to our bodies and guts, even if it flies in the face of what everyone else force feeds you.

Nope. I don’t have to like hiking. And nope, I don’t have to embrace exercise. I have my own ways of being healthy and living my life to the fullest doesn’t have to involve pointless walking.

And you know what? That’s perfectly ok.