"Exercise hurts," he said. Well, yeah, I said. But that isn't really a strike against it, is it?
"How can you say that? Pain is unpleasant. When I exercise, it hurts, and I feel really bad." That doesn't make any sense, I said. I mean, it makes superficial sense, I said, but does it doesn't really work that way. It hurts, but it feels good. "Yeah, it does work that way. I've tried it plenty of times. It hurts, it makes me feel bad, it makes me miserable. It always made me miserable, but I figured I'd be better off if I could do it and live with being miserable. Now I'm married and [wife's name] doesn't care that I'm fat, so I'm done with it." (The part about his wife is true. They're both obese and revel in eating huge amounts of food together. Sometimes she tags him on Facebook when posting about "fourth meal," which means hitting a drive-through at midnight for burgers or fajitas.)
This is something you've always wanted to do, I said. You bought the P90x DVDs and yoga mat. It was just a few years ago when you bought the Chuck Norris Total Gym. You were already married then.
"Old habits die hard. I wanted to be tough enough to take the pain. Wishful thinking. Now I know it's okay that I'm not a badass." Badass? You think I'm a badass? You think everyone at the gym is a badass? "More of a badass than me."
That was it. I've brought up exercise a few times since then, and his story hasn't changed. I get that he legitimately finds exercise to be extremely unpleasant. I guess I get that my experience of exercise requires as much explanation as his. What I don't get is how we arrived at opposite ends of the spectrum and why his experiences with physical exertion didn't push him over to my way of experiencing it. Did he not work out hard enough? Did he not work out long enough? What was the missing ingredient that would have made him experience exercise the same way I do?