SMOKE ON A TREADMILL
I Have Amazing News For People Who Exercise
30 minutes doesn’t matter
We’re all trying to say alive. More than that, we want to feel good when we’re on the topside of the lawn. Unfortunately, studies are always giving us different ideas about what’s healthy.
Drink wine. Eat kale. Don’t drink wine. Skittles are poison. Drink coffee. Don’t drink it! You’ll be dead in a week.
To make our survival even more confusing, we hear this kind of garbage —
Longest living woman drank whiskey and smoked a cigar every day.
Everyday? A whole cigar? Are you absolutely sure it’s good for me? Who can I trust? Here’s the kicker. New studies show exercise doesn’t count if you have dead-ass for the rest of the day.
What is dead-ass? You ask. You probably have it but didn’t know its name.
Dead-ass is that feeling you get when you stand up from your chair and your ass really hurts. It’s achy and cramped. It’s dead to you. It won’t help you stand up. You‘re on your own.
Your legs are useless without your ass. You never did strengthen your core. Until now, you didn’t appreciate the value of a living ass.
You grab onto your desk for leverage just to stand up. Now you know why it’s called dead-ass. Your ass is like a broken umbrella. You can’t take a shit out of it if the spokes are crooked.
You stand up. You‘re feeling minorly better. You spank yourself until your ass wakes up. But unfortunately, your nosy neighbor, who’s training to be an EMT, shows up. He’s seen your dead-ass through the window and everybody wants to be a hero.
Once your tush has recovered from your neighbor’s practice external defibrillator shock, your ass is back to normal. You feel fine. You are not only your dead ass. You are a healthy functioning person.
You remind yourself, I did thirty minutes of cardio this morning. I’m gonna live forever.
Now experts say 30 minutes of exercise doesn’t matter if you’re sitting on your ass for the remainder of the day. You could climb to the top of Mount Everest in half an hour, but when you came down you’re no different than the woman on her sixth Frappucino at Starbucks. It’s disheartening.
What can you do? You work at a desk. You write at your desk. You eat at a table. You watch television on a couch. How the hell are you supposed to stay standing for the whole day? I had a standing desk. It didn’t work. I kept trying to sit on it.
I tried the treadmill desk. Have you tried to work while you’re walking on a treadmill? It’s dangerous and shouldn’t do it unless you’re Superman or Wonder Woman. If you insist on a treadmill desk, wear a helmet, knee pads, and keep your phone dial on 9–1-.
What do we do people? We’ve eaten all the kale. We’ve bought all the exercise equipment. We’ve hydrated so much we’re land drowning. We’re so fucking calm from the Calm app, we’re uncalm again. Full circle.
The title of this article is I have amazing news for people who exercise. But the news doesn’t sound amazing, does it? Huh. I think I have dead brain. Have you heard of it? No? That means you probably have it.
Thanks to Andrew Rodwin for his Class-A editing. Get it?
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