Let the fitness begin.

Yesterday, working out seriously for the first time in a long time, I learned that there are supposed to be muscles in the forgotten wasteland of appendages and skin between one’s neck and one’s toes. And today, when forced to perform acts of athleticism and agility like sitting and standing, I was reminded of the fact that I have none.

Before I get further, a little exercise history: I got married in June.

(If I was telling you this in person, and you were a stranger and had a vagina, this is the part where we would both ooh a little, exchange obligatory congratulations and thank-yous, and proceed to smile in blank-eyed excitement at one another for a variable but always awkward stretch of time. I have learned to expect this little ceremony and participate, but I really wish I could just say “I got married in June” and move on without ado to whatever story this fact is incidental to. Like you are wishing I had done just now…)

I wore a strapless dress. Do you know what makes good work out motivation? The thought of having a hundred and some people all staring at your naked shoulders for a forty-five minute Catholic Mass. It’s miserable. You stare the altar and behind you they stare at the altar and your toneless hunchback.

The wrong place to look for sanctuary.

Dread in the face of almost certain humiliation forced me off my butt and into the disturbingly vindictive clutches of Jillian Michaels’s workout videos. I never did manage to get myself looking anything like the relentless, thighs-of-steel fembot creatures whose squats I consistently failed to properly imitate. But I was, for probably the first time since high school sports, actually in shape. I frolicked on my honeymoon in Hawaii, feeling downright unashamed, and that isn’t a feeling that comes naturally when your fleshy bits are squeezed between triangular scraps of nylon and shoestring.

Designed for our comfort.

But since then, the situation— like Congress’s popularity rating— has deteriorated. It’s too easy to say that the love handles perching atop my hips like overfed kittens are all a result of “married fat.” (Which is a real thing, see here.) Because the truth is, that apart from filing taxes together, sharing a bank account, and flinging around the words “husband” and “wife” with annoying abandon, Phillip and I aren’t any different married than we were unmarried and living in happy, cohabitational sin. I don’t mean to discount all the wonderful privileges of marriage (because there are privileges and they’re important and all adults should have them regardless of how those adults choose to stimulate the pubic nerve in the privacy of their own bedroom).

Or, you know. Anywhere else.

I only mean to say that our lives haven’t changed very much. As I tell people: we were happy and committed then; we’re happy and committed now. So really, it’s not as if marriage happened and boom, I began to gorge entire pizzas and sit for days in the same pair of slowly-molding sweatpants. Not at all. Because I’ve been doing that all along. What’s the old saying? Life is short, marriage is long, and heart disease is treatable?

There are no downsides.

If I stopped working out it was because— as is usually the case with my not doing all kinds of things, like flossing and resisting watching all the Dr. Who seasons for the second time— I had arrived at the unfortunate intersection of “Unmotivated” and “Undisciplined.” For a month there in July, while I simultaneously wallowed in unemployment laziness and fought back rapidly escalating unemployment panic, I could pretend the not working out was my reward for having worked out before the wedding. Then, desperation hit, and I got a job and it was doing that old favorite of mine: serving french fries to obscenely rich (and inevitably ancient) men. So then I was not working out because I was tired from spending hours on my feet— and after, all, was I not lifting those french fries? The weight of all that trans fat and white privilege, it’ll wear you out. That and dodging that other old favorite of mine: grab ass.

This guy knows what I’m talking about.

But I’ve long since grown accustomed to walking around listlessly for eight hours a day and forcing myself to smile at people who make more money in a day than they would get if they sold my organs on the black market. I really haven’t had any excuses for not working out for a while, except, well, like smiles, I’m very good at manufacturing them. But what, I tell myself, about my thesis? About spending time with my husband? About how weird my short hair looks in a workout headband? About how I should overhaul all our furniture for no other reason than Pinterest made it look easy?

Distressed wood? I’ll show you fucking distressed wood.

Pinterest can burn in hell. And as for my calories, well. Although my discipline hasn’t improved any, I do have new motivation: another wedding. This, apparently, is the only calendar event that will get me off my ass and fumbling with a pair of three-pound hand weights. The wedding isn’t my own; that would be quick work. (Although, believe me, the moment Jon Stewart ditches that wife of his, I’ll ditch this husband of mine without hesitation. —Sorry, hon. But you know all’s fair in love and wanting-to-do-the-crossword-in-bed-with-that-man.)

The wedding is actually my brother’s and I’m in it and so far my only contribution as a bridesmaid is enough arm fat for all. Other members of the bridal party (and the bride herself) are of the tall and slim and willowy type, and therefore, in an effort to avoid looking like a teapot among vases, I’ve decided I’ve got some work to do. And because I have a firm grasp of how nutrition and physical fitness work I’ve given myself only a month. Four weeks to drop the excess tub my body mistakenly thinks it wants to keep the babies that it —also mistakenly— thinks it wants all warm and protected by such a solid wall of fat. A month should be plenty, right? Should be even more time than I need, yeah?

After all, the internets tells me I can do this in a week.

For me, the key to a good workout is twofold; it consists of 1) convincing my legs that they are meant to bend and 2) convincing our neighbors that yes, it’s okay, I really just sound like that when I run. The neighborhood children, and some days the neighborhood appears to be nothing but children— roaming, hawk-eyed youths— stare at me as I run by with faces that say that they are seeing my beet red face and flailing arms, and seeing in their minds’ eyes some outdated 911/CPR/emergency protocol video they were forced to watch in school, and thinking: this is it; this is what they were talking about; this woman is clearly dying. So far, no ambulances have yet been called, and this is either because the kids have correctly interpreted my flapping palms and wheezing hellos to mean “Actually, no, I’m not dying” or because they are actually quite interested in watching me die. I suppose time will out.

In the mean time, I will continue to work out— driven, as all humans, mostly by my intense fear of public shame. And I will wish— sorta, kinda, but not really at all— that I had been born to a time and place that needed me to chop wood, milk goats, eat turnips, run for my life from carnivores… anything but exercise. Because jogging along in my outrageously comfortable running shoes, listening to music on my ipod?

That’s hard.