The other day I eavesdropped on a conversation in the tea room at work. One of the girls (bonde and pencil thin) had lost 10 kgs on the The Program - I didn't get in early enough to hear what program she was referrring to - and her friend confirmed that she'd never seen drop weight so fast on The Program.

Of course, my lil diet obsessed ears pricked up. Then one of the girls asked this dieting miracle about exercise. Blondey scoffed at the thought. "Me? Exercise? The only exercise I get is walking to the car to drive somewhere."

"Bitch," I muttered as I walked back to my desk with my coffee. "Slut, mole, whore."

Then I thought about it. Is she really so lucky? Is this all exercise is for? To shift the bucketloads of lard off my frame? Well admitedly that's what got me going to the gym in the first place but it isn't the only thing.

Think about the reasons you have for losing weight - to get healthy, to look better on the outside, to feel better on the inside for starters. If you woke up tomorrow and, through some shift in the world's makeup, you were unable to ever lose or gain a kilogram of weight again in your life you'd still get those benefits from exercise.

So anyway, lately I've been big on the gym attendance, quite the gym bunny indeed. But these thoughts have got me questioning my exercise routing. Say you took the lard-moving properties out of exercise - what do I really enjoy?

I'd definitely keep the Pilates and Pump classes. They are my favourites. The first thing to go would be walking on the treadmill. The treadmill, phht. The most boring exercise in the universe. Like a hamster running in their wheel, it is totally pointless and mind-numbing. Weights I'm pretty neutral about.

Looking at exercise from this angle has really made me thinking about the enjoyment aspect. And maybe I'm getting to into this to even have an enjoyment aspect. I always thought exercise was something to be avoided at all costs. How we change. But yeah, I think to maintain any kind of exercise program you have to enjoy it. Dead obvious really. That's what all the magazines tell us. But when you are coming from a stance of no exercise you can't really work out what you enjoy because it's all bad. You have to get into the thick of it, sample it all then step back and think about it.

I'll keep on doing the treadmill for the moment. It burns fat and is convenient in the winter. But when I've lost some more weight and the weather is warmer the treadmill will be kissing my curvy (and hopefully toned) butt goodbye. Much better to walking in the sunshine or along the beach than inside a sweaty gym going nowhere. I like to walk but I have to have a destination, a purpose in it.

Another change I want to make is to develop skills to enjoy exercise more. I like to swim but get easily bored. This is because I can only doggie paddle or breast stroke and you look like a fool doing doggie paddle in the lap lanes so I usually kick with a kick board. If I increased my swimming reporteire then I'd be less bored and get a better workout.

I've also been thinking of team sports but that's going a bit too far.