I looked on here and I think we all have different reasons for exercising however we can. Be they swimming, weight training, bike riding, jogging, cardio, or any other great means of staying in shape, even walking. I simply wondered why you, my fellow poster on this board, exercise and stay in shape.

To start the ball rolling, the main reason now that I do strength training with weights is now to just be in decent shape, and to feel good about myself physically. I started out lifting weights to ward off the depression from my best friend's death, but it evolved into so much more after I got going with the B/f as my initial trainer.

Exercise, for me, is a way to feel good about myself while doing something great for my own well being. It can also be a great release when I put on the boxing gloves and take out my frustrations on a punching bag. That is the other thing that I enjoy doing from time to time, thanks to inspiration from the B/f.

Please share your reasons, if you would. Let us, your fellow posters here, know something about yourself.

Because a waist is a terrible thing to mind.

Remember you actually asked for this... you'll be sorry...

Long answer:

"Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity." - JFK

It is part of my personal Paideia and Ethos. It is for me a part of Arete - striving for my personal best, testing my limits, being prepared for any opportunitty or eventuality, ensuring the fortitude required to endure any hardship. Just as a proper mental attitude is important to winning, a properly trained body is just as important: it can seriously affect/alter your mental attitude and outlook. I believe people get the most out of life when they are mentally and physically fit.

There is, in my opinion, genuine beauty to dedicating your life to pursuit of perfection in some endeavor. The physical not at all inferior to the intellectual.

I am an obsessive personality type that wants to keep improving. A type triple A league personality who isn't driven by money so much as by ambition and competition. I suppose that fundamentally I view most of life as a competition. I'm not at the very peak of my field (yet), but I know the game I am in, and I want into The Show. I can just imagine how it would feel at 60 to find that my best success was at 40; for me that would just totally suck. For me, and people like me, it is all about the game - whether "the game" is sports, or IT, or music, or business, or movies, or whatever - it is all about excelling beyond your personal expectations - competing against yourself: where you stand against the competition is just a scorecard.

My favorite quote is "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat. " - Theodore Roosevelt

I sincerely believe that there are no boundaries, that you can achieve anything with enough smart/hard work; but you have to be fully prepared to go and do wherever and whatever life leads you to - sometimes very unexpected places (Remember the Boy Scout motto? Be Prepared).

A major part of that preparedness comes from physical and mental fitness, so I drive myself to excel at everything - including things I would rather avoid, like crunches in the gym.

And Brother are there things I want to achieve.

Inherently I am a deviant product of my time and place; I was nurtured in a small southern town on the Boy Scout Motto, played team sports idolizing Bear Bryant, Don Meredith, Mike Ditka, Roger Stuabach, Jim Plunkett, Bruce Jenner, and a host of other giants; then I went into the Army and embraced the Ranger Creed.

I learned that being physically fit was one integral life component that allowed me to accomplish what others said was impossible, to overcome obstacles, to persevere when others had dropped out of the race. I may not be the fastest, or the strongest, but I can persevere no matter what.

That is why I go to the gym, exercise and stay in shape, to prepare myself for battle.

What? OHHHHH, you wanted a SHORT ANSWER?

That's a silly question: Because it's fun and because when we go out I want my husband's eyes firmly fixed on my eyes, my ass, and not the 20-30 something POA down the bar.

Told you that you would be sorry you asked. Yes I have had more than a couple scotch's.

Rob

I exercise because I refuse to be one of those African American statistics who has high blood pressure or heart disease or diabetes, or any combination of the above and end up dying long before I should if I simply took care of myself. I also refuse to end up like so many of the men in my family who seem to just not care once they hit 30 and end up with bellies. I also do it to look good and feel good about myself and to look good for my partner. I mean lets be honest...the gay community is very much about physical appearance. So a part of it is also trying to keep up with that image of the hot bodied gay male thing. But mostly I do it because if you don't take care of your body, it won't take care of you when you start getting up there in age.

I also stay in shape because the designers of the clothes I wear obviously have European men in mind and not a blatino brotha with a typical blatino ass on him. I don't like to wear tight clothes but I like clothes that are somewhat form fitting. I'm not into the 3X baggy look. I like my clothes to show off the fact that damn...he got an ass and damn...nice chest underneath there without being ridiculously tight.

I exercise to feel better and keep age at bay as much as possible. I don't want to be a couch potato like some of my relations who always seem to be suffering from some ailment, are never happy, and seem never to look in a mirror to see how much older than their actual age they look.I also feel it gives me more energy and creativity at work, and takes away the stresses of work and lifes drama. I enjoy working out and participating in sport, and yeah, I'm vain enough to want to look as good as I can.

You sure know how to hurt a guy!

If I didn't exercise, work out, do yoga, play endurance tennis - I would go insane. At the very least, I'd be depressed which leads to fun stuff like sickness, body aches, and misery. Plus, I love to push myself past my contemplative nature and into that brilliant testosterone rush that only comes with competitive sweat and effort. When I'm eighty years old, I'll be one of the diehards still playing doubles at the tennis court every morning. As is, I'll still be playing singles for quite a while yet..

Also, when I was eleven, my mother told me I was getting fat. I've been proving her wrong ever since much to the chagrin of my two brothers and father who've got those bellies we all dread. Not for me.

And relatives who haven't seen me in a while, especially the side of my family who've lived on farms in the midwest their whole lives, always comment that I must have gotten the "lean" gene...I just laugh, mumble something that they never seem to hear: "well, diet and exercise really help," and walk away to get some more angel food cake which sits near the homemade ice cream, the pecan pie, the lemon meringue pie and assorted cookies and brownies. I eat everything cause I've earned it, and I worried like mad about weight when I was a teenager and well into my twenties.

I also find that I just don't care anymore about fitting in to any external idea about what's in shape or popular or whatever...you have to feel good and in touch with your own well-being: physically as well as spiritually, it's all connected. Even if you're overweight and not happy about it, you really have to almost be okay with it first, so when you're doing something about it, it's got the right motivation behind it. It's great to look good, but it's glorious to feel good.

I love working out and running and boxing and biking. Why? I feel wonderful and exceptionally happy after I finish my work out.

I'm doing it for me and no one else.

For me exercising is my stress relief. After a crazy day, there is nothing as soothing as getting on the elliptical and zoning out to Law and Order reruns.

My ultimate high is going for a run. I am truly addicted to the endorphins. And there are no endorphins like the ones I get from running.

The collateral benefit is I get to look at some incredbly cute guys and have lust in my heart.

Essentially it comes down to just three things for me.

1) Accomplishment - Breaking personal bests, winning regattas, being the first one up the mountain on the bike. Accomplishment provides shor-term joy, and long term beneffits such as higher self esteem. Essentially you are bettering yourself.

2) Pleasure in Pain - in the process of the actual workout, sometimes this is hard to come by. Everyone has really good days where they are completely focussed, hit their stride and just feel unbeatable. On the other hand sometimes every second is complete agony and it's a mental battle the whole way. If you have done your workout well and truly pushed the limits of your capacity, though, the real pleasure comes about an hour after the workout. Your whole body feels heavy, you're tired, light-headed and despite the fact that every muscle fibre in your body is aching, you get this tremendous euphoric feeling that washes through your body and counteracts the pain. This is an especially big payoff for power endurance athletes such as swimmers, rowers and wrestlers, but I have experienced it running and cycling too. At anyrate, those who know the feeling I am talking about know that it is better than any drug.

3) I like the way it makes my body look. There really is something to be said for waking up in the morning, looking yourself in the mirror and liking what you see.