the exercise conundrum, and the idea of being full

Well, exercising sucks but does keep one on the up and up. I did my 30 minutes on the elliptical in my home today -

Does anyone else struggle with this? The feeling, only a few seconds into exercising, that one will die, that it's too hard, etc? Now that I've been doing this for a week I at least can tell myself that I've gotten through it before and can do it again - but those first few minutes are very mentally hard for me. Physically it's all right, relatively speaking. I have found a great set of music that I "ellip" to (since it's not exactly running, not exactly walking), and we have a squeak in our machine so I can actually time the movement to be on the beat, and that helps tremendously.

But the mental game, that's the tough part for me. About 10 minutes into it I start having conversations with myself - "Man, maybe 15 is enough..." "NO! Half-hour, you can do it, you did it two days ago" "But I'm tired" "Sure, but you can go half an hour with no problem, you'll feel great if you do" and the talk rages on while my feet just keep going. The music helps mask the "conversation" and encourages my feet to keep going.

Is it, perhaps, that skinny people don't have this in their heads? Like the same way I envision them actually saying, no, I really don't want the chocolate, I'm too full, statements that might as well be in Mandarin for all the sense they make to me.

Anne Lamott wrote an essay about learning to feed herself, struggling with the concept of actually BEING hungry and, conversely, actually being full. Weight Watchers' core program helps you learn to tell when you're full, too. Maybe that should be my new focus - really helping myself grasp the idea of being full and really trying to internalize the idea that you might NOT eat chocolate if you're full.