It may have been the Olympics. I’m not entirely sure, actually. But I think it was.

But over the last few weeks there has been this *thing* that was just nagging at me.

It was like a sore on the roof of your mouth. You know, the kind you get after eating Cap’n Crunch; the kind that you know will never heal because you just can’t stop feeling with your tongue.

Every day during the summer games, I sat at the edge of my bed with my laptop on my lap. I would tap, tap, tap out all of the things that needed to be tap, tap, tapped. And I would watch in absolute awe. The swimmers. The divers. The volleyball players. The gymnasts. The cyclists. The basketball players. It was easy to pick out the obvious commonality there—their bodies. Athletes treat their bodies like temples. Strong, powerful, awesome temples.

I treat my body like..well, certainly not like a temple. Most like, um, a donut shop.

My body isn’t strong. It isn’t powerful. It isn’t awesome.

It just…is.

I feed this body pretty well, most of the time. I love to eat vegetables and the good kind of carbs and proteins. I gave up diet coke over a year ago, in favor of tea. I eat things like chia seeds and quinoa. But I do partake in baked goods—often. And I love movie popcorn. I exercise this body, sometimes. I like to ellipticize and ride my bike—completely inconsistently. But I have a job that keeps me almost entirely sedentary—parked on my arse from 9-4.

But I have been feeling that this just isn’t enough—this kind of only sort of taking care of myself. It’s not enough to eat fairly well and to exercise a little. It’s not enough to just be thin.

I only get one shot at this life. And I am 34 years old. And this body? I want it to be around for the long haul. I want it to see my children grow up. I want it to travel across the globe. I want it to chase my grandchildren around the backyard.

I don’t want this body of mine to give up on me. But I know that in order for that to happen, I can’t give up on it.

And I don’t want to give up on it.

So that is how I ended up with a gym membership.

And a weekly personal trainer named Antonio who is the very best kind of guido (you guys—he is amazing. He looks like he was plucked straight off of the Jersey shore.) who had me playing some sort of dice game to trick me into doing over a hundred squats and forty-five stinkin’ push-ups and some crazy things with my arms and some interesting hoppy things and now stairs are not my friend and I have both the JellyLegs and the SpaghettiArms and I know that tomorrow I will likely feel crippled and not able to sit properly on a toilet seat. That is how I ended up looking very out of place on the second floor of LA Fitness in my Green Bay Packers t-shirt and leggings-as-pants and my David’s Tea water bottle.

And even though I am so very sore (I don’t really *need* to put a bra on today, right?)

I feel amazing.

And I can’t wait for next week’s session.

I am holding up my end of the bargain. So hopefully it won’t give up on me any time soon. And hopefully this old donut shop body of mine can one day become a temple. (A temple that eats baked goods and movie popcorn, of course.)

With just a little bit more GTL.

Pssst. Want to know what I thought of Jonah Hill’s placenta photos…and of Miley Cyrus’ new haircut? Click here!