Oh Gym, How I Hate Thee

It's true, I hate going to the gym. Lots of people say they go and get this massive rush of endorphins and it makes them feel like they are on a high all day. I generally feel a bit more energetic when I leave the gym, but not to the point where I feel super amazing. I see some of the people who do hours at a time of cardio, and I just can't imagine how they do it.

The thing is, it's not that I'm lazy. I love sports, and I'd like nothing more than to whack a tennis ball around now or play a game of badminton. For the most part though, I just find the gym super boring. Maybe I need some new music or something, but doing an hour of cardio while listening to the same old stuff on my iPod is one notch up above watching paint dry on my excitement scale.

An another note, a couple more studies came down the pipe on Sunday that I thought were pretty cool (mainly because I had c. diff a few years ago). Researchers have shown that heavy people/animals generally have different proportions of bacteria in their guts than their lean counterparts. In fact, if you transplant the microflora from a heavy mouse and put it into a lean mouse, the lean mouse will start getting heavy. That's sort of interesting. Also, if you can force someone to lose a pile of weight, the ratios of flora in their gut will change approximately inline with the weight lost.

I'd say in the last few years it's became more evident that the intestinal tract acts more like an active hormonal component to the human body instead of just a passive channel. For example, the PH level in the intestines seems to modify the body's response to certain stimuli, for example sugar. This may explain why some people report that they start losing more weight when they reduce their soda intake (even diet soda) -- that would ultimately raise the PH level of their intestinal tract.