A couple weeks ago, when I was hanging out with Sarah and Danielle, we passed a guy on the street handing out free one-day gym passes, and Sarah remarked, “you should take one for Fit for Free!” But I didn’t take one. I had absolutely no desire to. And it’s prompted a reevaluation of the blog.

I feel like a blog called “Fit for Free” should really have more of a focus on free/affordable activity! (Like this page on Melissa’s blog.) But I don’t think that free/affordable activity is really what I’m looking for anymore. The “guilt” from spending money on the gym but feeling like I wasn’t enjoying it or getting a good workout is only a small piece of the puzzle—a contributing factor to my unhappiness with my fitness level when I started the blog, but not the problem itself.

When I first started the blog in December, I envisioned a forum for sharing at-home workouts, and tracking my fitness progress after quitting the gym. I also thought I’d seek out free/cheap passes to gyms, yoga studios, and other fitness classes (like the Bikram yoga 30 days for $30 “challenge,” which I used to kick-start my gym-free life). But I haven’t taken advantage of such opportunities, even though they’ve certainly presented themselves (beyond that free gym pass on the street!)

Case in point: A couple months ago, I received a letter from my old gym with a survey asking “Why Did you Cancel Your Monthy Membership?” The “prize” for completing the survey was a free month-long pass. I filled out the survey and printed out the pass, but despite my best intentions, I didn’t go to the gym once that month. This was partially due to the fact that I’ve found fun (and free!) ways of staying active (every time I wrote “gym” on my calendar, my brain objected with: “I don’t want to waste my energy at a spinning class when I could be running around the park with Arthur!”*), and partially because a less welcome, nagging voice also kicked in (“you could go to a spinning class every day for the next month—then you’ll be in great shape for your trip to Florida in May!”**). After making/breaking quite a few gym dates, I realized that if I want to silence that voice, I need to stay away from the gym, at least for now.

Why? Because the gym isn’t fun for me, and because of this, it turns exercise into a chore rather than a joy, and brings back a lot of body-consciousness. If I’m not enjoying the exercise, then I have to ask myself why I’m going to the gym in the first place, and the only thing I can come up with is vanity.***

I know that joy and vanity aren’t the only two reasons that people exercise. When Brandi did her heart health series a few months ago, and talked about the health benefits of different types of exercise, something hit me: I don’t exercise for health, but so many people do. I exercise because I love the feeling of being active and strong. Exercise improves my mood and self-confidence tremendously. If I did exercise for health, then going to the gym wouldn’t feel like a chore.

The bottom line is: the past few months have taught me is that when I started the blog, it was to learn how to keep activity FUN, listen to my body, and learn how to trust it—not how to spend zero money on fitness. In other words, what I really wanted was to get in touch with my intuition. If my intuition told me to go to the gym, then I’d probably go to the gym, regardless of the fact that it’s not free.***

This blog has been unbelievably helpful to me in the past few months (almost entirely thanks to you!!!) and has brought me to a place where I feel calmer around food, and more confident in my ability to honor my hunger and maintain a good level of activity without forcing it. I’m on a path that I know I can stay on.

So here’s the question: Do you think I should keep my current blog name, or transition to a site more in line with my REAL goals—fitness, balance, and intuition?

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*I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Arthur as a major motivating factor in staying gym-free. If it wasn’t for him, I might have re-joined the gym, or bought a monthly pass to a yoga studio, as soon as I felt myself falling out of shape. But now, I know that I don’t need to. I LOVE our outings together, and always look forward to them. For the past few weeks I’ve taken him for an hour-long run/walk in the evenings after work, and it’s improving my mood, endurance, and overall sense of well-being. I never have to force myself to get up and go the way I did with the gym.

**I’ll be in Florida on that trip for the next four days, and won’t have access to a computer, but look forward to resuming blogging when I return next week :-) And I’m SO, SO glad that I didn’t force myself through a month at the gym during one of the nicest months of the year just so I’d feel better about myself in a bathing suit!!

***Coincidentally, the word that spell-check insists on replacing my name with.