I have a confession that may not surprise you: I hated high school gym classes. Since I was already a fat kid, I was of course seldom able to compete with other kids in most of the team-type sports that were the favorite gym activities back then. We were a pretty “successful” football, basketball and baseball school (nobody who spoke only English played soccer back then, or even knew what it was). So if you were the kind of kid who was always “picked last” on anybody’s team (or worse, if you were the “sympathy pick), sports, and so gym, weren’t gonna be your cup of tea.

On the other hand, I loved Phys. Ed. in college. Instead of catering to the twenty or so boys (and never girls — they were supposed to be either cheerleaders or librarians back in 1970, remember?) who were football team material, in college the assumption was that only a rare few of us would have even a short-lived career as a college athlete. Rather, the focus was on introducing us to physical activities that we might actually enjoy, that we might actually keep on doing throughout our lives. So archery, golf, volleyball, badminton, racquetball, handball, and other such sports were the curriculum. And I had a lot of fun.

One of the complications of being in the weight loss game is the fact that you are always getting a ton of contradictory advice on what you should be doing. (And recall, this is mostly from thin people, who may lack some important perspectives on the usefulness of their advice.) In the area of exercise, the current “consensus” seems to be that you should do aerobics, but not too much. Some people say 20 minutes’ worth. Or else 40. Or else intervals (a minute of heart-splitting intensity followed by a minute of nursing-home drool stroll, and repeat…) I’ve read experts who say that you can not absolutely can not lose weight if you “overdo” aerobics — that anything over 40 minutes’ worth a day will actually interfere with your progress. Then there are those who say you need to plan to spend serious time — an hour or more a day — exercising. (One of my best friends lost about sixty pounds and went from being a rather large woman to a virtual supermodel by getting a state of the art treadmill then using it for about 75 minutes of intense work a day. She’s now an intensive cross country cyclist and doing great with that.)

Others now say it’s weights that do it. Not aerobics, weights. Meanwhile, my doc recently volunteered that “of course, the trick is aerobics.”

From a psychological point of view, there are two problems with these contradictory newsfeeds. First, they bat your head all over creation. What exactly are you supposed to do, really? It’s then that you realize that basically, nobody knows for sure. Experts are at war, and everybody else is trying to market something to you. (“Buy my book and also my high protein drink…” etc.)

The second problem is that you may not actually like some of the stuff that the experts are recommending. Like, what if you really hate weight rooms, weight training, weight anything? You want to get weight out of your life, not to add it! Or suppose treadmills give you hives?

Because if you don’t actually like the exercise you’re being asked to do, you just won’t do it. Like my high school gym classes, first chance you get, you’ll never go to that sport again.

On the whole, it’s probably much better to start by figuring out what you like to do. Sure, ideally some blend of something that’ll make your muscles stronger and more toned, with something aerobic, are best. But there are a whole lot of ways to get there. Better to take the approach my college gym teachers did: find stuff you’ll stick to, at least for part of the year.

And I do believe that you’ll know when you’ve found “IT.” That sport you really love. Maybe even the sport that seems to be a genetic “fit” with your body.

On a small scale, this might mean that some equipment fits your body better than other kinds, so you enjoy the exercise. My gym has at least four different makes and models of elliptical machines. One of them I love, and so I use it every day. The other models just don’t feel right — legs are too far apart or the ovals my feet make are too high or something. I’d never stick to them.

A few months back for a magazine article, I interviewed a 78 year old woman who began training in taekwondo, a martial art like karate, when she was about 63. She had been offered a class as a freebie by the owner of the taekwondo club, and didn’t expect to enjoy it. But she felt she was feeling some physical decline and wanted to try something to reverse the effects of, she assumed, aging.

She told me that “after my first block, I knew this was my sport!” She absolutely loved it. Within a few years she had earned a black belt, and eventually became a master-level student and instructor in the sport — while in her late sixties and early seventies!

I’ve known others — one of them is my cousin — who took to martial arts as though they were just born to it.

When you find your sport, you’ll be more likely to stick to it than if you have to force yourself to go every day to some gym and do something you hate. In the long run, the best exercise isn’t aerobics or weights, but the one you keep doing.