A healthy appetite.

It’s nice that my gym has eight or ten televisions hanging from the ceiling. Each one is tuned to a different channel, with an audio box attached to every exercise machine where I can plug in my headphones and tune in to whatever channel I’m interested in. That’s convenient, and gives me one less reason to stay home and make a big Meldraw-shaped dent in my couch that too often fills up with pennies and rubber bands and stale kernels of popcorn that I never discover until I lose the TV remote.

I’m appreciative of the wide selection of television programming available to me while I’m on the StairMaster. (And I’m talking about the machine with the little pedals, not the giant half-of-a-down-escalator monstrosity that I refuse to climb because it makes me feel like I’m trapped in a freaky, acid-trippy M.C. Escher painting that I will never, ever get out of, so help me God. It also brings back my childhood fears of getting a shoelace caught in the escalator at the mall and being pulled to my death via the gears under the escalator belt while my mother yelled after me, “I told you not to run up the down escalator! See what you get?”) Anyway, I’ve noticed that such a wide programming selection means that at any given time, at least three televisions will be showing commercials, and chances are likely that one of those commercials is for food. Occasionally, one of the televisions is even tuned to the Food Network.

Which, come on. What punk puts the food channel on at the gym?

I can’t watch those food commercials when I’m working out because it makes me ravenous. All I want to do is stop and eat, and suddenly when I look over at the person on the machine next to me, they’ve turned into a giant taco in running shoes. But I also can’t close my eyes because my balance on that machine is precarious at best, and by the time I’ve climbed what equates to about 45,000 flights of steps, let’s be honest: I’m pretty much relying on visual cues to stay upright. So, at the first sign of that Applebee’s commercial with the Gilligan’s Island parody that I irrationally love, I avert my gaze and start counting the number of times I see people making mean faces at their personal trainers behind their backs.

By the time I get back to my apartment and retrieve my mail, finding two sheets of pizza place coupons and an ad for what promises to be the best barbecue in town, my self-restraint has taken an enormous beating.

On the days when I work with Leah, it is especially difficult to find the energy to argue with myself over dinner plans. I’m always tired and sore, because Leah has beaten me up and taken my lunch money again, and I sit down on my couch and realize that I can’t move. Not even a little bit. I’m usually too tired to even think about glancing in the general direction of the kitchen, which is probably empty anyway, because I go grocery shopping about as often as I get my oil changed.

Then I start to fantasize about delivery, because Pizza Hut could bring me my dinner, and I wouldn’t even have to get up off the couch. I could just yell for them to come in when they ring the bell, and they could set the pizza box down on my lap and pluck the money from my limp hand. And I bet if I tipped them well enough, I could even get them to turn on the television and place the remote beneath my fingers before they leave.

But then some small part of me remembers that I think I saw a pork chop in the fridge a few days ago, and I bet there was some rice in there, too, and I heard somewhere that having protein after you work out is a good idea. And even though I can practically taste the greasy pepperoni and melty, cheesy garlic bread that has already been delivered to my imagination, the logical part of my brain is offended by the idea of sabotaging my health habits after I just busted my ass at the gym.

Inevitably, I also realize that reheating the pork chop is faster, and impatience trumps laziness any day of the week.