Har Gym Gym Ki Kahani

(The untold story of every gym)

“Did you lose weight? You still look fat! Are you even dieting properly?”, asks a fellow client at the Gym every consecutive day. Maybe in the hopes that I am supposed to miraculously lose 2 kgs of weight every other day. I had been dedicatedly going to the gym for the last 2 months compounded by the 40 minutes swimming classes in the morning and the stubborn belly fat was yet to say goodbye.

My brush with the gym culture is not new. Back in 2018 I had enrolled myself at a posh gym in South Bombay (paying every penny I earned as MSc stipend) because my ex- partner thought I wasn't thin enough. “You have the potential to have a thinner and fitter body” he reminded me casually every single day. So there I was paying through my nose for the gym and a personal trainer (I could barely afford) to live up to my “potential”.

However, after going to the gym for 3 months and seeing no changes in my weight, I was disheartened. I quit going and let my one year's deposit go down the drain.

The problem with the Gym culture in India is that people come with a weight-loss mindset and like the 2-minute maggi they expect to see 10 kg weight loss in 2 months. In the process, also projecting the same worries on their fellow gym partners.

The trainers at the gym too share the same mindset, where they assume that the client's focus is to lose weight and push them towards that direction.

What we fail to realise is that there can be more than one goal for exercising at the gym. Some people exercise to stay fit, some to tackle chronic diseases and others like me to take care of their mental health. Personally, going to the gym acts like a therapy, helping boost the “happy hormones” in my body and also helps me stay energetic throughout the day.

A gym should provide a positive environment of growth for everyone. It is that one place where people are vulnerable, they want to work hard and become a better version of themselves. So, we should respect each other's goals and should realise that weight loss is not the end of the fitness game.

Fast forward to 2022. After 3 years of a hiatus from the toxic gym environment, I am back to the gym again. This time not because someone told me that I should become thinner but because I realised exercising daily makes me happy.

I sometimes still slip into the negative mindset of comparing myself to the “thinner” girls at the gym. I still worry about the breadth of my thighs showing through the athletic shorts and I still let the weighing scale dominate my mood. But nowadays I am more conscious about the negative thoughts and no matter the rain, hail or snow, I go to the gym daily to work on myself.