Every day, I’ve been getting on the treadmill, putting in an increasing number of miles. Last January, I said, “I am going to get myself in shape,” and while I don’t have a sculpted body yet, I’m a lot thinner and there are clearly muscles on me. I look a lot better.

It sucks just as hard.

When I first started, back when it was hell just to jog at a half-hearted pace for three minutes, the exercise fascists came along like Moses, offering to take me to the Promised Land. “If you don’t enjoy exercise,” they chirped brainlessly, “You must not be doing it right! And after you do it for long enough, your body will eventually begin to crave the workouts!”

Supremely stupid advice like this makes people fat.

See, I hate exercise, but I’ve learned that I have to just settle down and do it. For years, I was convinced that I obviously didn’t know how to work out right, and if I found the perfect way of exerting myself it would be every bit as fun as playing videogames. It never happened, and I frankly doubt that it will happen.

What’s important is that despite the horrendous, sweaty, ugly nature of the workout, it must be done. It’s not pleasant, but neither is paying your taxes. Nike knows, even if its clients don’t: “Just do it.”

“But I looooove exercise!” the fitiots claim, not bothering to consider for a second that some people’s bodies might be wired differently. “And since I love it, everyone must get the same orgasmic charge out of it that I do!” These are also the same people who never seem to understand that people don’t share their food tastes, either, and run around insisting that no, you’ll really like brussel sprouts this time around.

Fact is, I got a bum body. I’ve given it a year just to see if at any point I’d crave exercise… But it hasn’t happened. I talked to my dad, who used to go for forty-mile bike rides, and he admitted that he did it for the scenery, but hated the way his legs felt. Some of us just don’t get any joy out of exercising. And no matter how hard I tried to wrap that ugly, burnt-out feeling up in a fun package of DDR or tennis, it was like slathering frosting on a slab of liver.

As it turns out, I like being in shape. It’s nice not getting winded walking upstairs, and my back feels better, and it’s a thrill tucking in my T-shirt instead of having it stretch over my belly. There is the extreme thrill of realizing that you’re late for something and running the mile there, all by yourself.

But the exercise itself? Ah, that’s the job that pays the salary. I don’t love the job, but I like the money. And despite what people tell you, it’s not necessary to love your job as long as you can have fun when you’re not at it.

I’ve watched myself on the couch. Every day, I have this conversation with my body:

“Don’t you feel the urge to run?”

“Nope. It’s fine right here. Say, can I have a piece of cake?”

“I said no. So you just want to lie around?”

“Pretty much, yes.”

“What happens when you get fat?”

“I don’t think that far ahead. I’m the body, not the brain. I’m perfectly comfortable just eating Cheetos and watching television until I have to go to sleep.”

“Well, I’m the one who is paid to think, and I think you’ll be a lot unhappier if you don’t exercise. So get up! Raus! Raus!”

Reluctantly, my body shuffles downstairs. It’s never happy to go, even if there’s that charge of Having Accomplished Something when I’m done.

So I’m here to tell you the honest truth: Exercise may not be fun for you. Ever. And if you're that unlucky, you just have to keep pounding away at it, even if you don’t want to, because there’s no immediate reward. There may not even be a medium-term reward.

Still, I look at my body now, and it’s thrillingly alien. I’m still pudgy, yes, but now I look like an athlete who’s gone to seed rather than just a fat guy. You can see the outlines of real muscles lying underneath this fleshy sheath, closer than ever; I look normal. Nobody’s going to think I look skinny, but I could walk around naked in front of strangers and not be completely ashamed.

I wonder what it’ll be a year from now. And I realize that I’ll never know unless I trudge downstairs and put in the time on that goddamned treadmill, and so once again I enter the depths of Hell to come out a little more purified.

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