Exercising with Mr. Darcy

The elliptical trainer in the basement was getting dusty, and I was getting, um, well-fed.

I had gained five pounds last spring, in Paris, and over the summer found that not only was it impossible to get rid of them, but they were calling their friends. Parisian pounds, sadly, are no more glamorous than Midwestern American pounds. I knew that desperate times called for desperate actions.

So I rummaged around in my bag of old boring tricks, and came up with this: eat less, exercise more. I already walk a lot--well over an hour a day, easily, with the dogs and lunchtime strolls. I needed to add something aerobic. Aerobic, if you look it up in the unabridged Three Dog Blog Dictionary, has a one-word definition: boring. It means doing something mindless over and over again, like on a cross-country ski machine, or a rowing machine, or, yes, that elliptical trainer in my basement.

Music, podcasts, magazines, TV--none of it was enough to keep my attention. Each time I started an exercise routine, I ended up quitting in absolute boredom.

This time, it occurred to me to haul the laptop down the basement and pop in a DVD. I started with "Persuasion," and found that exercising with Captain Wentworth was not a bad way to go. I'd seen the movie many times before--it was the only movie I've ever watched and then immediately rewound and started watching again, from the beginning.

So biting off choice scenes kept my exercise routine going through February and into March. And then PBS started running "Pride and Prejudice" on Sunday nights. I realize I am 13 years late to this party, but trust me--even 13 years late is pretty good for me; I seldom show up at parties at all. I watched a few snippets of it on Sundays, but only enough to determine that Mr. Darcy was a strange stalker-type character who did nothing but glare at the vivacious Lizzie from 10 feet away in every scene.

My friends assured me I was wrong; he is not a stalker, he's reserved and proud and awkward, and he gets better. (I vaguely remembered this from the book, but only vaguely. It had been a long time.) So I bought the DVD.

Ah. Now I get it.

"Pride and Prejudice" took me through March and April, 20 minutes at a time. It not only made me exercise, it made me want to exercise, so that I could find out what happened next. (Will the odious Mr. Collins really propose? When will Bingley come back? What is Mr. Darcy doing in that pond?) It made me extend my exercise time from 20 minutes to 25 minutes and occasionally a bit beyond.

I have lost 8 pounds.

And now that Mr. Darcy is transformed; and Lizzie is --well, not tamed, exactly, but made a bit less impetuous; and the big-eyed Mr. Bingley has finally done right by Jane, it is time for me to find a new boyfriend to serve as my personal trainer into the summer.

I've heard "North and South." I've heard "Cranford Chronicles." What do you suggest?

Oh, and speaking of late to the party, am I the only one who only recently saw this? It's the YouTube of Bridget Jones interviewing the actor Colin Firth, and it's quite hilarious.