How to Negate Your Workout in One Sandwich
A Love Story: Part One
Like most normal human beings, I have a love/hate relationship with the gym. Love, because I genuinely feel like I could take down a mugger with my bare hands when I exit the building, and hate because…well Jesus, how long do you have? No one willfully subjects themselves to a dance remix of “Hold Me Closer Tiny Dancer” with pleasure, do they? Or a session on an elliptical next to someone who’s just sweat his entire midlife crisis all over the machine and then leaves WITHOUT WIPING IT DOWN? Or sweating your own midlife crisis out next to a smooth-skinned twenty-something in a Lulu Lemon one-shouldered crop top who does a 7-minute leisurely walk because anything more intense means having to put down her phone? And don’t get me started on the gym bros. My dudes. It’s too heavy for you, no one will judge you for taking it down a notch. But we are judging you for the huffy puff and the earth-shattering clang of male insecurity when you drop those weights. Your dad’s not here, it’s okay.
Anyway, there are three reasons I work out. One: I had my kid when I was kinda old and no one bothered to tell me how his childhood would coincide with my body starting to breakdown. I mean I’m no Godfather cast member, but there’s a reason people tell you to have your kids young. Hence, I need to keep up with his ridiculous energy levels while he’s small, before his adolescence coincides with my upcoming menopause, which should also be excellent.
Two: (and this ties in with number one) I’d like to have a reasonably manageable old age. I hope to go out like Rose in the Titanic movie. At the age of 104, in my sleep, after having dumped my great-grandchildren’s entire trust fund into the ocean. The reality is, most of us will spend our last years being looked after by an A.I. chatbot-hologram-robot-nurse in an old age home while Generation Jetpack are off frolicking on a Mars space station or something, I don’t know. So I workout to stay as mobile as I can, because I’m not sure there’ll be…anyone to look after the Gen Xers when we get old. My friend Didi’s mom always says, “Exercise or fossilize!” And after hitting my forties, man, do I get it.
Three: I love sandwiches.
A lot. I’ve never abandoned them, even in the dark days of the Atkins Diet, the Paleo Diet, the Keto diet, this low-carb, bread-is-evil rule that the internet tells us will melt all our middle-aged belly fat away (ease off man, I housed a human in there). Look, I get science, I know that eating a loaf of Wonder Bread before bed isn’t going to help matters if you’re trying to fit back into your pre-baby jeans (7 years and counting, heeey-ooooo), but I also know that paleolithic man didn’t subsist on avocados and walnuts. If I can’t eat a sandwich at a picnic, on a hike, or comfort myself with a nice grilled cheese on sourdough bread after a shitty day, what’s the point of it all?
Would I like to look like Jennifer Aniston when I’m 54? Sure, but it’s too much work and I don’t have the money. Would I like to have the self-discipline of Mark Wahlberg? No thanks. If I fasted for 18 hours a day and went to bed at 7:30pm every night so I could wake up at 3am to workout, I think I might have a lot of regrets on my deathbed. I’m not sure anyone ever thinks to themselves when they take that last breath, “wow I sure am glad I spent all that time in a cryo chamber instead of eating cake and hanging out with my kids.”
But the beautiful thing about hitting your forties, after spending your twenties and a chunk of your thirties worrying about being skinny (and not knowing how fucking adorable you are), is that you realize “everything in moderation and lots of exercise” really is the only way to go to be happy and healthy, but it doesn’t sound sexy and it doesn’t make anyone any money. So I will work out enough to be healthy, to keep up with my kid, and to hopefully be mobile in my eighties. So I can eat the salt and vinegar chips with a cold beer when I’m hanging out with Jude and Justin on the beach. And I will pound the face off a kimchi and egg grilled cheese smeared with anchovy and garlic butter on a lazy Saturday morning. Because life is too short to go to bed at 7:30.
More sandwiches!! I’m so obsessed with not wasting food I once made a cappuccino with the leftover milk from my kid’s breakfast cereal. Sure, it was during a state of emergency, but I try and duplicate that same kinda thriftiness during non-emergencies as well, if only to pat myself on the back for saving a few bucks on the next grocery store run. I majorly screwed up a batch of whole wheat buttermilk pancakes a few weeks ago; the batter was too dense to cook through in the middle, so I had to fry them beyond the point of fluffiness to straight up crispiness. Absolute garbage pancakes. Perfect whole wheat biscuit-type buns. I popped them in a Ziploc baggie and threw them in the freezer. Pals, I might make the same mistake again.
I am out of control, and I still have some in the freezer. Stay tuned.
Happy cooking, chickens! I’ll see you next week when we discuss making sandwiches over an open fire, why King Charles III will never be as cool as his mom, and how it isn’t really possible to have a bad breakfast sandwich. xo
Enjoyed this!
And yes, the future that awaits us all is Black Mirror’s San Junipero.