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How to Try Again [Philosophical Monday]

After deciding to move to a more desirable neighborhood (read: not a suburb), we had to give up a few amenities, like our guest room/home gym in the basement. Yet, we were both also determined to continue losing weight. So despite having never managed to have made full use of a gym membership before we moved to the suburbs, we decided to once again join a gym.

In our new neighborhood, we found not one, but three gyms within walking distance. Two of the gyms, nationwide chains, were offering rock bottom prices, which made a membership at the gym closest to us, a hoity-toity one in which local mom and dad celebrities can occasionally be seen grimly maintaining their bodies for the cameras, come to approximately five times what a monthly membership at the two chain gyms would have cost.

The fancy gym was a five minute walk, one chain gym was a 10 minute walk, and the last chain gym was a fifteen minute walk.

The cheapest gym was the ten minute walk, but it didn’t offer any extra amenities and it had a very masculine, steroidy vibe to it. I could see myself having to blast the music on my headphones extra loud to avoid hearing the grunts of the hardcore muscle-builders.

The farthest gym was only a little bit more expensive, and it also happened to be the one that we’d had a membership with before starting to work out at home. But it didn’t have any day care options for our daughter.

The expensive gym was five minutes away, offered an array of classes that I might or might not take and a number of extras like a spa, nursery, juice bar, spin classes, zumba and free towels.

We went back and forth about this. We’re both vanilla elliptical or treadmill folks, who know how to pack our own gym towels, and only get massages when they’ve been gifted to us. But we ended up going with the most expensive option.

Since then I’ve been forced to take two 10 day breaks from exercising twice, due to IVF stuff, but each time, I’ve come right back to my three-day-a-week gym practice. Why? Because at the end of the day, I’m cheap and unwilling to waste that much money on something I don’t use. Also, the gym is only five minutes away. Last Thursday I left out the door at 5:50 and still made it to the 6AM Rise and Shine yoga class with time to spare.

Strangely enough by foregoing the deal, I was actually able to achieve my goal of becoming a regular gym goer. It also helped that I can sleep walk out of bed, into the gym clothes I set out the night before, and to the gym without having to operate any heavy machinery.

This is all to say, that when learning from our past failures like not making full use of a gym membership, as opposed to trying the same thing again, and swearing that you’ll be different this time, perhaps it’s best to do the opposite of whatever you did last time. Go with the closest gym. Don’t seek out the best deal. Not happy with the cleanliness level of your house, commit to 15 minutes of cleaning a day as opposed to finding another housekeeper. Resolve to lose weight over the course of a year as opposed to a few weeks. Floss in the morning as opposed to at night. If you didn’t finish your last book, finish this one no matter what. If your last boyfriend sucked, date someone totally different.

If you’ve taken the easiest/cheapest/most desirable option in the past, and it hasn’t worked out, try again, but this time, try different.

featured image credit: graffiti.freiburg