So there's a trend I'm noticing of "middle aged women will do anything to not work out" referring to videos poking fun at women doing like, bungee aerobics (I don't know if that's what it's called but that's what it looks like) or some kind of cardio where you hop around on springy boots; you can kinda see what I mean here:
https://youtube.com/shorts/dTvOlaGeK1M?si=Vrb8-3zrmYTbJhiw
(warning that the sound for that is extremely annoying)
and holy shit everyone shut the fuck up
Working out is boring, working out sucks. I like to go running because it's a soothing activity for me, and part of the reason is because it requires zero brain input and I can just space out and daydream.
aka, it's boring
Your body hurts and you are outside, that's the bit. I like it, but I completely understand when people don't. The same goes for lifting weights, which I personally do find a little boring and which doesn't even have the perk of being easy to parse like running is. Running is you put on shoes, you go outside, you move at a pace faster than your normal walking speed. It took me forever to get brave enough to start strength training because it requires knowing how to do exercises (and often doing so in front of strangers), figuring out what order to do them in and with how much weight, etc. Sure, there's guidance online, but a lot of it is conflicting, tied up in diet culture, and frequently outright monetized. Plus now you're doing tons of homework before you even get to the physically unpleasant part!
(And that's not getting into nutrition, which is its own difficult and separate hell especially for anyone with disordered eating problems.)
Anyways, I just wish more people acknowledged that:
1) exercising can be (often is!) painful and boring
2) spending hours of time physically in the gym and/or planning what you are going to be doing in the gym is not possible for some people, either because they cannot or will not and both of those things have nothing to do with discipline
3) gym/fitness culture is still very gatekept and intimidating
if a woman wants to sign up for a thirty minute class where she knows where she's going, how long she'll be there, what the environment is going to be like, and then bounce around for exercise, man, let her fucking cook and go back to hogging twelve machines at once for your three hour crossfit routine before you go home to eat unseasoned chicken and rice and suffocate in your own protein shake farts
