I’m kickboxing in the mornings and I’m damaged goods. My knuckles are bruised, my thighs are sore, and my knees are skinned.

In theory, I’ll start losing my paunch. And I’m the paunchy kid.

Kicking/Punching a bag is not as therapeutic as I was led to believe. I don’t channel my stress into the bag; I just get sore and tired. Moreover, I don’t really feel healthier afterwards or days after. I’ll let you know if there’s a change in my mentality regarding it, but currently it’s pretty un-exciting.

This is the right thing for me, though. Hitting 30, I need to keep active otherwise I’ll expand out. My waistline is already extending….ever so slightly. And there’s my paunch. My ever-so-lovely paunch that used to be a six-pack, back when I was 1/2 my age.

There is no business-minded analogy that I’m going to thread in this post. Sure I could say “healthy body, healthy mind” or “doing the right thing isn’t easy” or some other platitude. But really, I’m just talking about exercising and why I don’t like it. I’ve…..never liked it. Not when I was a teenager, not when I was a young adult, and not now. I love being able to do athletic THINGS (swimming, kayaking, etc). But exercising…never. And it amazes me because in the back of my mind I sort of bought into the promise that if you do something long enough, consistently, you learn to love it.

And that’s just not true. I probably will always hate exercise.