Living the Resolution

After traveling and being ill, it had been a couple of weeks since I had been to the gym. Going back felt great. And by great, I mean lousy. Ugh – I became a prof to avoid having to do heavy lifting.

Upon returning I found that my local gym was packed with people enacting their New Year’s Resolution to lose weight and/or get in shape. Given that I have constant struggles to maintain my weight, I understand the pain of getting back to it. In fact, it turns out that losing weight is the number one resolution that most Americans make. Reducing crippling debt is number two for most people (It’s my personal favorite for three years running). Number three is quitting smoking, which I have luckily never started (Resolution accomplished!). After those top three, the popularity of resolutions becomes a bit more scattered. Number four might have something to do with maintaining urological health. The fifth one is “putting a ring on it.” I am pretty sure that number six is about being more like GayProf.

Regardless, if you are one of the erstwhile folk entering the gym for the first time to slim down a bit, or just to tone up, let me tell you a few secrets that I have learned:

The gorgeous personal trainer who chats you up in the gym and hangs on your every word isn’t about to ask you for a date. S/He just wants your money. Have you ever been to a gay strip club in Montréal? No? Luckily, GayProf has gone so that you don’t have to – That’s the type of blogger that I am – Selfless in the pursuit of knowledge. One thing that you’ll quickly learn in a Montréal gay strip club is that the performers can size up audience members quickly and efficiently. They know within a minute of being on stage who will lay out the extra cash for the pleasure of their company. Trust me, they probably have a better sense of your current credit score than Visa does. They ignore most of the audience in favor of a select few (lonely, rich, or drunk) individuals who they know will hand out the bills if given "special" attention.

Personal trainers have similarly honed their skills. They target the folk who are the most uncertain about being in a gym. They know how to stroke your ego just enough (“You have such good form!”) that you won’t even remember signing up for a month’s worth of nonrefundable $80 sessions.

One of the most unconvincing fictions that people accept in a gym is that it is “much easier” to shower at home. You mean it is easier to wrap your sweaty self in a thick layer of winter clothing, slog out to the car in your gym shoes, allow the sweat to dry to a crusty film as you drive home, and then get into the shower? The awful truth is that most people are too self-conscious and worried that others will judge their bodies that they avoid the gym showers. Put those worries aside. The gym showers aren't the same ones from seventh grade. Nobody is going to judge your body – out loud.



Most of the gym “smoothies” will just make you fatter. A dash of protein powder and a couple of bananas doesn’t mean that the tasty milk-based drink isn’t loaded with extra calories and fat (Not to mention worth a fraction of the six bucks that you plunk down for it). It was some type of genius who came up with the notion of installing a milkshake station in gyms, but making them sound healthy by calling them “smoothies.” People are desperate to lose weight, so you decide to serve dessert? Isn't that a little like opening a bar in an AA meeting, but instead of serving Martinis you say that you are serving “elixiries?” Actually, I would totally join a gym with a bar in it.



Recently divorced guys loiter around the gym. Maybe they are gay, maybe they are straight. It is one of the few cases where sexuality doesn’t matter. You’ll know the recently divorced because they are leaking desperation. They are the ones who are just a little too eager to talk with gym goers a decade younger than themselves. If straight, they will likely be confused by the notion that most women actually go to the gym just to work out. Recently divorced guys are also the ones who most often try to lift an absurd amount of weight for their muscles. Don’t worry, they will be okay. Right now they are under the delusion that the end of their ten-year marriage magically teleported them back in time to a decade ago when they were twenty-five. If approached by one of theses guys, say something supportive yet noncommital.



Every gym has its own sense of courtesy. Circuit training is great – But totally impossible if your gym is not set up for it. If you are in a standard gym and attempting to circuit train, you are essentially asking to monopolize three or four machines all at the same time. Also, avoid the Princess Di syndrome in the locker room. Most locker rooms have a single center bench in the middle of a bank of lockers. This is not there for you to spread out the entire contents of your gym bag, thus giving the rest of us no place to sit and put on our shoes.

That beautiful guy with the enormous arms and stunning set of abs is taking anabolic steroids. Sorry, kiddies, it’s a big lie that serious hard work and devoted exercise will turn all of us into rippling mounds of muscle. Heck, if goody-goody Steve Rogers couldn’t do it without tapping government-developed ‘roids, what chance do the rest of us got?



Oh, sure, the guy whose arms look like he is illegally smuggling anvils works out a lot. In fact, you probably see him at the gym every time you go. But, without the juice, it wouldn’t be possible for his biceps’ circumference to surpass his hat size. Men and women’s bodies really do have limits that can’t be broken without chemical intervention. I am not saying that steroids are good. I am not saying that they are bad. All I am saying is that some folk are quite obviously taking them as part of their gym addiction and lying about it.

Wearing jewelry during exercise is nasty. Unless you are fresh off a tour as a Hip-Hop star, leave the gold chains at home. Do you really want it encased with the stuff your body excretes under stress?

After February ends and most of the other New Year’s resolution folk return to their living rooms, you will come to the realization that there are more gay men in your gym at any given moment than the local gay bar. It’s something that the fitness industry doesn’t want to acknowledge, but us gays keep most gyms financially afloat. Hey, if our community didn’t foster ridiculously high standards for male beauty along with crushing low-self esteem due to natural aging, many of these joints would have folded years ago. Now, where did I put those steroids?

No Energy

I am perilously close to falling off the gym bandwagon. A few months ago, I wrote about my malaise at the gym. It didn’t pass like I imagined it would.

Going to the gym has never been one of my favorite activities. Basically I only attend the gym to keep from turning into a rounder, squishier version of myself. My goals are modest. Lately when I am at the gym, though, all I think is, “I am so fucking bored.”

Being bored at the gym just magnifies how much I dislike the activity. Walking through the doors, I am hit with the gym smell – which I hate.

It’s not even that my gym has a bad smell exactly. I mean, nobody would mistake it for a Victorian rose garden, but the place isn’t skanky. Still, I hate the smell of the cleaning products and the sweaty people inside.

Maybe that’s the issue. Maybe it’s the other people who drive me nuts. Can’t they join the rest of the United States and just give up on their health? I mean, we have our global reputation to consider. We aren’t going to stay the fattest nation in the world if people keep coming into my gym in order to sweat their ass off – literally. Doing that is downright unpatriotic. If we, as a nation, aren’t morbidly obese, clearly the terrorists have won.

Come on, Boston, look at the example being set by Houston. Now there is a patriotic city! Heck, all of Harris County is eating deep-fried cheesecake just to counteract Boston’s fanatical devotion to exercise and “sensible” living.

Of course, despite slimming down, most of the Boston gym folks still find a way to take up as much possible space in the locker room as they can. The men’s locker room in my gym has five (5) benches for a room that allegedly holds sixty people at a time. Yet, every time I go in there, some schmuck has managed to spread out all of his crap across one of the benches. He has his towel, his bag, his ipod, his sippy cup, his steroids, and an autographed picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger (with suspicious lip prints) strewn out so that nobody else can make use of it. Okay, maybe that’s not the actual contents of his bag – He uses a regular cup.

I know that I am just projecting my boredom at the gym on innocent bystanders (even if they are really annoying bystanders as well). Still, I can’t work up any enthusiasm for the gym.

To distract from the boredom, I have tried many different things. To occupy my mind, I focus on deciding important issues that aren’t related to the gym. For instance, today’s treadmill jaunt had me contemplating whether I could get away with incorporating catchphrases from either Wonder Woman (“Great Hera!”) or Samantha Stevens (“Oh My Stars!”) into my daily conversation. Even exploring such weighty issues hasn’t eased the tedium.



My ipod playlist has been reorganized and updated innumerable times. I have altered my cardio and even given into trying the elliptical machines. This didn’t bring the new thrills that I hoped.

Nothing is really helping. Not even pretending to have bionic legs and reenacting the intro to the Six Million Dollar Man keeps my attention on the treadmill.



Over the past few days, I have also been sorting through all the other reasons that people give for going to the gym. What about the endorphins? If you depend on endorphins to feel good, you need a better pharmacist.

How about adding years to your life? Screw that. How much time do I really need to spend on this planet? I mean, it’s not without its charm, but I am not certain that I am looking to take on extra shifts either. Isn’t there some deal where the children are our future? Aren’t they supposed to keep things running so that we can die early?

Part of the boredom probably results from the fact that I know that I have basically hit my plateau at the gym. Sure, I could push my body further, but that would require either a) changing my diet and/or b) increasing the amount of work that I actually do at the gym. Let me tell you now, neither of those things is going to happen. If it’s a choice between red wine and washboard abs, hand me the corkscrew. Conveniently, I can use it to open the wine and drill new holes into my belt as well.

It all seems so futile. I believe that it was the great philosopher Marilyn Monroe who noted, "We all lose our charms in the end." No matter how much one goes to the gym, we all age. Sure, we can keep the body in tune, but nothing changes the face. We've all see the guys with the fantastic bodies but an old head. I suppose, though, you don't look at the mantle when you are poking the fire.

Great Hera! About the only thing that barely keeps me going to the gym is the fear of being labeled “un-dateable.” Maybe I could just work on improving my personality instead.