4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . and switch

Are you ever flipping around the dial and you come across one of these ridiculous exercise shows? They're on FitTV all day long, unless they're playing either the show with the fat guy cooking low carb food, or the strong guy cooking healthy food who is the worst television host ever and couldn't explain his way out of a wet paper bag. Anyway, on these exercise shows, you'll usually have three to five fit-looking people doing aerobic exercises synchronously, maybe bouncing off of some kind of step-like device which could easily be replaced by a large book or a block of wood and the exercise would be the same and you would save about fifty bucks on that damn step. And the person in the front is always the leader, and he or she will tell everybody else what to do, sometimes using crazy exercise lingo that only gym-heads understand, talking to the home viewing audience from time to time, giving them words of encouragement. And you can almost always hear something like this at least a couple times during one of those shows: "Ok eight more. 1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . . 4 . . . You're doing great! Keep it up! 7 and stop." Trust me exercise person when I say that the people at home are not doing great. They're all laughing at you. A wonderful career choice you've made. What I want to know is, are there really people out there that watch this stuff and try to do the exercises along with them? Is it a spur-of-the-moment thing or is it planned out? Is some woman at home flipping around the channels and comes across this show and says, "Hey, this looks good. I think I'll try it." Then she throws off her shoes and has at it. Or is it more of a regular habit. She's out with her friends when suddenly she realizes what time it is. "Oh no!" she says. "I gotta get home. My favorite show is on soon. I never miss a Bodyshaping. That Gilad is a great encourager." I find it hard to believe that there really are people out there watching that stuff for a reason other than to make fun of it. But I guess there must be. But you know those people look nothing like the people that are exercising on the show. The people at home are fat slobs. No truly fit person would be caught dead exercising to one of those shows. That's why I think that on each one of those shows they should have some fat goof jumping around in the background, trying to keep up with the leader, and being unsuccessful at doing so. Not only would that give those poor chubs at home better self esteem from seeing someone more like themselves try to do the exercises rather than focusing on these unrealistically ideal-looking people, but it would attract a vast new audience of people like me who enjoy laughing at fat people trying to do aerobics.