Can exercise spark joy and if not can I bin it, Marie Kondo style? I write this from my traditional position: a hunched, static ball, like a gargoyle (expression and posture). As one of the 47% of British women who have done no vigorous exercise in the past year, I hardly move. It has got worse recently: the dog’s too old for long walks, pilates is too far away, meaning I’m paying £35 a month just to feel guilty, and I’m really busy, OK? (If you could raise your heart rate with defensiveness and excuses, I’d be fine.) The past six months have been my least physically active since I had glandular fever at 19, a time I look back on with nostalgic longing: sleep for 14 hours, read for 10 minutes, snack, then back to sleep.
I feel bad: stiff, sore and insomniac. But is that because sitting pretzeled in front of a laptop for 12 hours a day then moving to the sofa to stare at a larger screen is objectively bad for me, or because I am culturally conditioned to believe it’s bad? OK, it’s the first one, but the peer pressure is crushing too. Every middle-aged woman in the media has chiselled deltoids, a six-pack and a story about how happy getting ripped made them. I’m delighted we, collectively, will soon be able to literally crush the patriarchy, but I’m definitely not pulling (lifting) my weight.
