Thursday 21 February 2013

Why would cake beat exercise in a fight?


I'd like to make one thing quite clear. People who say exercise is fun, or that they enjoy working up a sweat, or that they work out every day, are completely and utterly stark raving mad.

I speak from experience. 

I understand that I can't just sit around and eat cake and expect to be thin, so today I decided to do some exercise. I got on the exercise bike that's been used as a coat-stand in our living room since last autumn and I cycled for half an hour.

I huffed and I puffed and I got sweaty. I felt like my glasses were definitely going to fall off my face from the perspiration. My back felt like I'd poured a litre of water over it. It was not a pleasant experience.


As my arse now feels like it will never be comfortable again, I'm in a good position to be able to tell you that exercise isn't fun, it's plain painful. Sweating is disgusting. Anything that makes me hurt in places that I never knew it was possible to feel pain in is clearly the work of the devil.  And that's why people who think that exercise is fun, and a valuable use of their time, clearly need some sort of brain transplant. 

Which leads me nicely on to the reasons why cake would always, always beat exercise hands down in a fight:

Cake doesn't hurt me. As I am an expert cake eater (and I'm alright at making them too), the chance of cake hurting my bum is slim to none. You can't say the same for exercise.

Cake makes me salivate, not sweat. Salivating is a nice experience. It doesn't make me smell. It makes me anticipate the taste sensation that's about to explode in my mouth. Cake is never accompanied by tons of antiperspirant and a shower. It just needs a nice cup of tea.

Cake doesn't confuse me. Exercise comes with a whole host of dos and don'ts, conflicting advice and how-to guides. It requires serious investment - both time wise and money wise. The hardest decision you have to make with cake is which slice to eat first.

With cake, I always know which way the scales are going to go - namely, up. With exercise, you can spend a whole week of sweating, lunging, lifting and running every day and end up putting on weight. I'm not one for uncertainty, and with cake I always know what to expect.

Cake doesn't waste my time. I reckon I could eat a slice of cake in around two minutes flat. A good workout could take up to thirty times that amount of time. Yuck.

Cake isn't monotonous. Think of all the flavours! From Bakewell tart to spotted dick, brownie to the humble butterfly cake, the possibilities are endless. There's a plethora of debates to be had about cake - perhaps the most famous source of conflict surrounds the impossible-to-pigeon-hole Jaffa Cake. With exercise, the outcome is always the same - it hurts. There's no debate to be had. What's more, I never have to find motivation to eat cake, or talk myself out of the things that stand in its way. It is a wonderful thing.


I have to say though, that there maybe is one good thing about doing exercise. My time on the bike today gave me time to think about why cake would kick exercise's sorry little arse every time.

So maybe there is room for both cake and exercise in my life? And maybe by doing more exercise, I'll come to appreciate cake more. Life is a funny, funny thing.

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