Going to the gym

The first part of this blog post I wrote on March 7, 2025, but I ended up not posting it at all, so I decided to just bundle it here and connect it with what I wrote today.

Back in March

Yesterday—future me here, it’s no longer yesterday—my friend Jakov shared some thoughts about habits, motivation and discipline so, that kind of inspired me to write this post.

I’ve mentioned it a couple times in this blog but I haven’t really made that much of a deal about it. The title already says it, I’ve been going to the gym for the past two months—now 7 months—in an effort to lower my weight and see how strong I can get.

It’s been quite a journey so far, and I have definitely failed some times to show up, be it for laziness, lacking the time or whatever else, but, the point is, that even among all of that inconsistency, I’ve managed to at least show up once a week.

The ideal week for me consists of going to the gym 4 days, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. I swap between three routines that focus on different muscles of the body, plus 15 to 30 minutes in an elliptical machine.

When I used to have work from home days, I would go on Monday mornings and be home before work started, but the rest of the week I go after work and spend about 80 minutes there total.

In reality, I have only gone 4 times a week once or twice. I have gone thrice a week about 80% of the time, and some weeks I’ve only gone twice. A couple weeks back I got sick and I only went once, before I stopped due to my illness. Still, in the end, I’m still going, and that’s a win for me.

During January and most of February the gym is pretty much full when I get there, to be expected honestly, since I am not the only one who commited to it at the start of the year!

Now that we are in March, I finally started to see the gym get a bit emptier, I actually haven’t had to wait or form a queue for any machine yesterday! I have to say, I’m quite happy to be one of the ones who has remained after so many stopped. There’s still a long way to go of course.

This morning

Last week, I didn’t go to the gym, and the past two months I’ve only gone like once one week, twice the next week, and then once two weeks in a row, more or less, can’t remember, maybe not even once sometimes.

Even if I don’t go to the gym everyday, I want to at least be consistent with it. I want to go 3-4 times a week, every week. I have been winging it to this day and always making up excuses.

I started out relativerlly well during the first two or three months of the year, but ever since then, I’ve lost all resemblance of consistency.

And I come up with all sorts of justifications and excuses. “I forgot my gym clothes”, “It’s raining a lot”, “I don’t feel good today”, “I will recover by coming another day”.

Some of them made sense, some of them didn’t at all. The truth is that I rarely compensate for anything, and many times, I “forgot” my clothes pretty much on purpose just so I could excuse myself later.

It’s just so wrong, and yet my brain still wants to make up more excuses. “I won’t have enough time for other things”, “I am not eating that healthy so it’s useless anyway”, “I can just excercise at home instead”.

I do have time to do other things,¹ and yes I struggle with food, but it’s not really an excuse to not go, and yes excercise at home is perfectly fine, but I know I just won’t do it.²

So, here’s the deal. This week, I’ve gone to the gym twice already, so, today I will just go again, and do the excercise I got to do (today is leg day!), and then it’ll be the first week in months where I actually go for three days, and I’ll have achieved success. I may even go again this Friday (tomorrow I rest!) and that would definitely be a very rare sight.

It’s always the same, I dread going to the gym, I don’t like thinking about it that much, I kind of always want to avoid it and get away from the possibility of actually going. But once I get started and I’m inside the building and my brain is like “what else can you do at the gym other than excercise” I simply get to it and I do it.

And once it’s over? I actually don’t mind, I love the feeling of my sore muscles, there’s something so exhilarating about it, I feel strong and healthier in those moments.

These two days, are only two days, I may go today, sure, and I also may completely fail next week again. But I will try to be consistent.

Today, after the gym

I did it! I showed up again. That’s thrice in a week, and that was a really satisfying session. I was listening to Into the Aether VIII: The Sony PlayStation Portable the whole time, and felt so much energy that I ended up walking back home from the gym! That was almost a 4 km walk, and I didn’t mind one bit.

I don’t think I can commit to walking back every time I go to the gym, but I did it today because I got a ride from work and ended up arriving much earlier than usual, so, if these rides become a common thing, I might commit to walking home more often. Just to do a little extra.

Earlier at work, I had a quick medical check-up. They measured my weight, height, heart pressure and eyesight—what a coincidence—and everything was pretty alright! Except that they told me I’m 10 kg over my weight. Of course that in many cases that ideal weight isn’t necessarily actually ideal, but it feels right to me. I am not satisfied with my current physicality, and I want to get in shape. So, I guess my goal will be to go down 10 kilos. It seems achievable enough I think. And that’s a good first step to actually sticking with it.

Today, I’m happy I made the effort. Now I just have to convince my eating habits to cooperate…