I’ve seen you in the gym–a fresh face among all the regulars. I’ll see you come in for a week or two, or maybe even a month. But then…you disappear. Where did you go? Did your schedule change? Did you embrace another form of exercise? Did you just give up? What happened to you? Why did you stop going to the gym?
… well if you must know, I’ve hit a plateau and I’m taking a couple of weeks off to recover. It happens once or twice a year for me. Besides, the mid summer heat & humidity just wears me down despite my climate controlled living.
As for gym newbies… it’s a lifestyle and some people are just not prepared to make the lifetime commitment to being in the gym as part of their daily routine.
I haven’t given up; my schedule changed temporarily. Mr. S is working days for the summer, so I am too. During the school year he would go to work at 3 pm; I would leave for the gym at the same time, when there was almost nobody there and I pretty much had the place to myself, and then come home and work (I’m self-employed) until he got home at 12:30 am, in addition to whatever work I got done in the morning. But when he’s on days it works better for me to get up at 6 am when he leaves and get right to work, then knock off for a bit when he gets home around 3 pm so we can hang out a bit, and then work sporadically for the rest of the evening. So I’m working in the middle of the day, which is my preferred gym time, and I don’t like to go when it’s busy early in the morning or in the evenings when all the day-jobbers are there. I’ve also had a heavier workload, which keeps me in my office most evenings and weekends as well.
I’ve been substituting by taking over the lawn mowing; we have enough to keep me busy for an hour or two of decent cardio a couple of days a week. I’ve also been keeping my eating habits on a even keel, and my weight has remained steady at about a 15-pound loss, same as when I quit going, which is fine by me. I’m looking forward to getting back in the groove (and also maybe taking a min-vacation!) in September. Really! I WANT to go, but work HAS to come first.
I stopped but only this week, and only for a bit. You see, between the oncoming start of school and the packing/tossing for the impending move at the end of this month, time is a major issue to me for now. The gym is a 10 minute drive each way while the Trak is hanging in the garage, so for now i’ts simpler to take a grueling 45 minute ride than change-drive-park-workout-drive-change.
Also, the membership in my current gym expires August 9th. They rape you for a month-by-month extension so I’m planning to just wait til about mid-September once the move and start of school are past and join the fancy healthplex up the road.
Thanks for missing me.
Because it ate up too much of my time getting there, checking the kids into the daycare, changing, working out, checking out and getting home. It would be near the kid’s bedtime at that point and they hadn’t even eaten. Not a workable schedule for us.
So now I work out at home after they’re settled for the night. Quicker, easier, and–even better–totally free.
Because I just. Freaking. Hate. It.
The entire time I’m on the gerbil wheel or whatever the aerobic machine du jour is I just keep thinking about stuff that ain’t going right for me. How I’m always short on time. How I’m spending an hour here. At the gym. Doing nothing but thinking about where else I should be that would be making my life better. Then it hits me: I can keep coming to the gym, get fit, live longer and do so in a life that has crumbled around me. Or I can screw this, go home, do the dumb things I gotta do and die sooner but more content.
That said, I absolutely love chopping wood, building stuff, playing in the pool, working on cars and taking hikes. So it’s not that I don’t get out & do stuff. I’m not skipping the gym so I can watch Star Trek or spin some of my old worn out disco vinyl.
Sorry I even signed up in the first place. Sheesh! At least I gave it a try!
I took a year off. I hadn’t planned on it, and I can’t even give a good explanation as to why.
I was at the gym 4 times a week for about 3 years. An hour and a half or so around lunch time.
Last summer I made an unexpected trip back to NJ for a friend’s funeral, and when I came back home, I had a really hard time getting back to the gym routine. I’d try to get back into it thinking, “So, I ended up taking 2 months off.” Then 2 months turned into 6, then 8, then 11, I just never packed my bag. It wasn’t fun anymore, it had become a chore, and nothing I tried could get me back to enjoying it.
I just started going back about a month ago, and I’m only at 2 or 3 times a week, getting back to 4 or 5 is my plan, but it’s taking me awhile to get full motivation back, although I have been riding my bike to work more often, which I guess counts for something. I volunteered at an aid station of a half Ironman triathlon yesterday, and that certainly got me motivated. I made sure to pack my gym bag this morning. I’d like to try a triathlon some time next year.
Lots of new faces at they gym, but still a handful of the same old folks. A couple of people actually approached me and exclaimed “You’re back!” and asked me how I was, etc.
It finally feels good to be back.
I’m afraid I’m going to have to skip this week. Ivylad and the kids are visiting his mother’s, and there won’t be anyone to let the pup out to the backyard until I get home.
I’ll watch what I eat this week and see if I can’t take a ride around the neighborhood on my bike.
I was only using the membership to go swim laps, and the pooly got so funky, poorly-lit and just plain nasty that I couldn’t see the lane lines in the bottom through the murk. It occurred to me that I’m a lot lighter than a lane line, and if I conked my head and sank, it could be hours or days before they find the body…
When I’m on vacation in the summer, I kind of get out of the habit. See, I always go early in the morning, and at the moment, I’m not waking up early in the morning. I know it’s not much of an excuse. I’ll be back in the gym bright and early, though, once school starts.
:hangs head in shame:
I know, I know. I’ve been meaning too, and I try to do my workouts at home now that we have our own exercise ball, but without curtains, I feel funny doing all the different workouts when someone could come by and look in.
Excuses, excuses. I’ve been bad… 
Ditto.
Face it, the gym is boring. And annoying. There’s all these damn jocks (male & female), and the trainers are not very nice. And I have to take time out of my schedule. And it’s in front of 1,000 other people. And it’s indoors - why do I have to be indoors in the summer? And I bike or run or whatever and I never get anywhere else. My spatial position remains the same.
Gyms are stupid to me and I never got the point. I took up jogging & biking in my own neighborhood, and biking is so much fun. So I do my yoga & stretching in the mornings, and in the evenings - biking. In the winter, I either use my dance mat or exercise with some good old Punjabi bhangra music on.
Too expensive. I can run, lift weights, do an exercise course in a park, and swim for free, outdoors. Why should I pay to do it in a room of sweaty, smelly strangers?
I felt pretty much the same way when I started out, but I got over that quickly enough.
It works for me because I spend my lunch hour in the gym. My monthly fee is $24, and on average I’m there (or, was there, like I said, just getting back to it) about 16 times per month. I know me and if I didn’t go to the gym, I’d end up getting fast food, or going to the mall to look at, and probably buy, new shoes or something. That’s just how I am, and that’s pretty much what I did this past year.
So, instead of spending money on junk food (and gaining weight), or misc. clothes or whatever, I spend $1.50 a day and lose weight, feel better about myself, and get out of the office. I can pretty much zone out and ignore just about everyone in the gym. For awhile I tried bringing a book with me to read while I did my cardio, but it didn’t work well. My routines get too intense to be able to hold a book and read it. We have a weight bench at home, but I do like the variety of machines at the gym as well.
I still ride my bike, and do activities outdoors, and I enjoy those more knowing that my lunch time routine is helping me condition myself for more strenuous weekend activities.
It just works well for me. And with that, I’m off to the gym! 
Did you join a gym and then figure this out?
To keep this on track, I was interested more in the reasons of the people who signed up, paid the money, went a few times, and then gave it up. At one point they were motivated enough to go, but soon after they seem to give it up.
Well. Where to start?
I feel like I really don’t belong. I’m heavy and out of shape and not buff at all (I know, we all have to start somewhere). I feel like everyone’s watching me. I hate being watched. I pay, every month, but whenever I get near the gym and decide that I really should go, I come up with many excuses not to go. I always resolve to go later, even to the point of deciding when I’ll come back. But then, the excuses are always there.
I have some social anxiety issues I need to work on, I guess.
On preview, I still pay. I keep telling myself I need to either go or stop paying, but the paying for it is one of the things I try to use to get me to go.
I’m probably beyond help.
I haven’t been to the gym since about January 15th, the last time it was too cold to ride my bike outdoors.
I just hated working out in public while obviously very overweight. I weighed 270lbs at the beginning of March (26yo 5’5" female). Talk about soul-crushing when you calculate your BMI. I remember feeling hideously fat about six years ago when it was 34.9. At my gym orientation visit in March I was 44.9!
I just felt so exposed working out at the gym. I even got a trial month (free!) membership at a fantastic gym near where I work, but it seemed like everyone else there is so fabulously fit and toned and chipper. Whereas I didn’t even want to leave the locker room. I couldn’t make myself go more than two times.
But that doesn’t mean I gave up. I get as much physical activity into my day as possible (walking as much as possible, taking the stairs instead of an elevator, etc…). And I’ve been watching my diet very carefully. So far I’ve lost 27lbs, basically without using any structured exercise - just diet only. I bought a couple workout DVDs, and I plan to start using those a few times a week.
One other reason I don’t have a gym membership now is because I have two jobs, one full-time 8-4 M-F, and one part-time 5-9pm three nights a week plus a Saturday day shift. So really, I don’t know when I’d have time to work-out at a gym more than maybe twice a week.
However, I figure I’ll quit or greatly reduce my schedule at the part-time job at the end of the summer. And at my current rate of weight loss (which has been very steady), I should be down another 15 lbs by the end of September. Although I still won’t be comfortable working out in public, I think that at 230lbs it’s do-able. Whereas at 270 I just wanted to hide under a rock.
I stopped lifting about three months ago because I just can’t get into it. After two years of lifting, I saw no change at all. I’m sure that a trainer could help this, and I have chatted a few times with the fellow who I plan on getting some sessions from, some day… “Some day” may likely be several more months down the line.
My guilt is soothed somewhat since I still go to the gym a few days a week to run, late at night or when it is raining.
Because when I had a schedule, I went. And once my schedule changed, I stopped going. I just can’t seem to get started up again. Because I hate, loathe, and despise the gym, and unless my body accepts that it’s going to have to go because today is 1:00 on Monday and we always go to the gym then whether we like it or not, I don’t go. I think about going, I say I’m going to go, but I don’t go.