Working Out Regularly and One (Supposed) Benefit

In today's New York Times (in the Science section) is a little piece about one benefit of regular exercise. (Link to the article: "3 Hours a Week of Exercise May Lower Your Depression Risk.")

Here's a key sentence: The study found that almost any type of physical activity, whether strenuous or light, helped to offset people’s genetic propensity for depression, though the benefits were greater when people exercised more often.

Okay. I understand the logic of it--even the science of it. But here's what happened when I was reading that piece on my Kindle in the coffee shop today: I laughed. Maybe even sneered.

Because here's the truth about my own exercise--something I've done regularly almost all of my life. 

PAUSE: Unfortunately, there have been periods when I've, uh, eaten more than enough--okay, far more than enough--to compensate for the caloric burn. Losing weight in my adult years has been a constant activity.

PLAY: As I've gotten older, just the thought of exercise has made me more depressed. I usually go out to the health club about 1:30 in the afternoon (I try for 5-6 days/week), and as that time approaches, the clouds move in, the drizzle commences, and I think of reasons--sensible and ludicrous--why I probably should not work out that day.

In my salad days* I loved exercise--from earliest boyhood on I was a dynamo. Even in later adulthood I was running six miles (or more) a day, and when my knees announced one day, No more running, well, I started walking a lot, riding an exercise bike, StairMaster, etc.

Then ... my 70s arrived. By then I was on Trelstar, a cancer-fighting med that also zapped almost all of my testosterone (the food of prostate cancer). Suddenly--and I mean suddenly--all joy in exercise vanished, replaced by dread ... and depression. Other meds contributed dizziness to the mix.

Yet I knew I had to keep exercising. (Prostate cancer also loves fat cells.) Do it and live a little longer; don't do it and die sooner. Simple. And hard.

So, yeah when I finish my workout (which consists these days of stationary bike about 30 minutes, walking a mile, rowing machine, some curls), I feel (momentarily) better--even virtuous (which I patently am not). But then the clouds begin to move in almost immediately because I know that if I survive until the morrow, I will be out at that Damn Club again, and the exercise will, for me, be difficult, draining.

And depressing.


*a phrase Cleopatra 1st used in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra; right at the end of Act I she says

My salad days,

When I was green in judgment: cold in blood ...