What’s Your Excuse: I Can’t Afford a Gym
24 May
This is a guest post by Lisa Thomson who writes for Plus Size Survival. It is part two in a five part blog tour.
I can’t afford to eat healthy. I don’t have time to go to the gym. My family needs me. I need to get my sleep. I can’t afford a gym and even if I could, I’m too big and out-of-shape to go. It doesn’t matter if I lose weight…I’ll still have to wear the same clothes because I don’t have money for new ones. I’ve failed before and I’ll fail again.
How many times have you said one of those phrases to yourself? If you’re like me, chances are great that one or more of those phrases has been echoing in your mind for a long time. And the sad truth of the matter is this: Those excuses are just excuses. While there may be some underlying truth in each of them, most of them are things you can change.
In this series What’s Your Excuse? Common Excuses That Keep Your From Losing Weight, I am going to focus on 5 of the most common excuses I hear that keep people from losing weight. I’ll share the things I’ve learned that have turned those excuses around and have helped me shed over 35 pounds.
Common Excuse #2: I can’t afford a gym.
Although it’s true that gym memberships can be expensive, you don’t have to join a gym to lose weight. There are plenty of things you can do that don’t cost a lot of money!
Workout Videos – Workout videos can be purchased online or at a local retailer, borrowed from the library, streamed on Netflix, or borrowed from friends. I’ve even been able to snag some great ones at garage sales.
Here are a few of my favorite workout DVDs that I have found for under $10.
- Jillian Michaels – 30 Day Shred
- Leslie Sansone – Walk Away the Pounds
- Any of the Biggest Loser Workout DVDs
Couch to 5 K Running Program – This program is designed to turn even the laziest of couch potatoes (or overweight non-exercisers like me) into a runner! It’s a 2 month program that will take you from being a non-jogger to consistently jogging 3 miles (or 5k) in only 2 months. I adore this program and got my whole family on board. It was fun to watch all of us get stronger, run faster, and start to enjoy the process.
Take the Hundred Push-Up Challenge! Push-ups are a great full body exercise that work your shoulders, triceps, abs and torso. This program is designed to get you all the way to 100 consecutive push-ups!
Make your own weights! You can use soup cans, water bottles, milk jugs filled with water, or anything else you can find around your house.
Use the Stairs! No, I don’t mean take the stairs instead of the elevator, I mean walk or jog up and down your stairs 3 times in a row (or 5 times). Better yet, head out to your local high school stadium and take advantage of those steps.
Grab a friend or family member and take a walk! Don’t take a leisurely stroll, get those arms pumping and get that heart rate up. This can be a great time to bond with someone you care about while taking care of yourself too!
You can totally do this! Make exercise a priority in your life. You’ll feel better and look better!
If you missed Common Excuse #1, check it out here.
I thought it was going to be more expensive to eat healthy but because we are choosing a different lifestyle it makes up for it. We rarely go out to dinner anymore except for Subway, that saves money. I don’t want to go out and only have a salad so I chose to save the money for other things.I used to drink lots of diet cokes, now I drink water which saves quite a bit. I used to love to go to the movies often, not for the movie usually, it was for the buttered popcorn. If I can’t have that, there aren’t very many movies I want to see. When we do go, I take beef jerky with me to nibble on, saves money. Chocolate from the candy store (homemade) is like $12 a pound and we used to eat a lot of it all the time let alone all the mild duds and peanut M&Ms that aren’t cheap. We cut our meat cost in half. My husband and I now share a piece of chicken instead of each having one. We put extra veggies on our place to fill them up. It doesn’t cost more to eat healthy when you factor it all in.
Linda you are absolutely right – it doesn’t cost more to eat healthy when you sit down and “weigh” it all out. That used to be my excuse – that I couldn’t afford buying all the fruits and vegetables. Hog wash! What I was spending on fast food and junk food was a loooot more expensive than the cost of fruit and vegetables! And yep it’s a lot cheaper to drink water when you go out to eat (and better for you!)
The “I can’t afford a gym” excuse makes me laugh…because how many people join and then don’t actually go? lol
Another good piece of “cheap” equipment is a jump rope. They really get that heart rate up there quickly!!
.-= Momma Sunshine´s last blog ..A Sex and the City Moment… =-.
I have a jump rope but it’s not the most comfortable thing for me to use because the ‘girls’ are rather large and the jumping up & down thing just doesn’t cut it for me! LOL
I’ve totally used all these excuses before! All they do is enable you to continue bad habits and gain more weight. Its no good.
.-= Lily Fluffbottom´s last blog ..Sunday Breakfast =-.
Right on! They definitely only ENABLE you to continue with bad habits and they are exactly that – EXCUSES!
I will be the first to say that I used to be the girl in the gym that everyone hated. I hung out with all the (lame) jocks and I was in amazing shape. Then I got pregnant, got gestational diabetes, broke my foot, blew out my knee, and now I have an extra 60lbs on me.
I am just lazy now – but I really want it. I want to be the old me, I still feel like the thin girl then I catch my profile in a mirror and reality sets in.
I need to find a chubby buddy and get my butt in gear!
.-= Jaime-Ann Laidlaw´s last blog ..Needed: Someone to Make my Copy-Wrong, Copy-Write! =-.
Broken foot? Ouch! Gestational diabetes – not cool (been there!). It sounds like you know what you need to do so now it’s time to do it
I love the tip about the Couch to 5K program!
I found another one that I used to get started running again, offered by Runners World magazine… I don’t know if you can find it online (I got it as part of a trial subscription) but it basically lets you start off by walking every day for 2 weeks, first 20 minutes then 30, and then adding jogging portions into your 30 minute walks until you can jog a full 30 minutes – usually about 3 miles or 5KM
Another resource you can use for motivation is http://www.mapmyrun.com – if you map out your route every day, input your calories and what type of exercise you did (running, walking, etc.) and add any other exercise you did (including household chores, it has spots for that!) it will show you your progress of how many calories you’ve burned, how far you run each day, week, month, year, and over a lifetime, and you can input your weight into it and track how much you’re losing, too!
It also shows you local 5K, 10K and 25K runs, marathons, etc. so you can set yourself a goal if you really want to become a runner.
I highly recommend it!
.-= Cheryl´s last blog ..28 Weeks Pregnant! =-.
Thanks for the resource recommendation. I’ll definitely have to check it out!
I have excuse after excuse for why I am not getting motivated and losing weight like I should and I have my Wii and my Jillian Michaels Wii game and my Jillian Michaels 30 day Shred, its just me getting off of my butt and doing it.
I really like the “Couch to 5k program.” I have always wanted to run a marathon and this program is not hard. I think I can attempt to jog for 60 seconds at a time. I am definitely going to hold myself accountable and give it a try.
Shay that used to be me (all the DVD’s, the Wii & Wii games, etc). And you’re right – it is the whole ‘just getting off of my butt and doing it’ thing. It’s so hard to make yourself get up and get moving but I don’t know about you but for me once I’m up & moving I feel AMAZING!
Oh yeah, what a great excuse- no money for the gym. I have used that one plus I have arthritis and can’t…….So because it is summer I garden. This uses up calories by walking to the nursery for flowers, carrying the load home, bending, digging and just standing and looking at the flowers. After a few days of this I can actually skip rope with my granddaughter now. Any kind of movement is better than none. Right?
.-= susanne´s last blog ..Marketing to Businesses =-.
Susanne you are right – any movement is better than NONE!
I gave you an award. Stop by my blog to pick it up! Your blog has been a great inspiration to me.
.-= Lily Fluffbottom´s last blog ..Mondays Are Always the Hardest =-.
Awh thank you so much for the beautiful blogger award
I’m so glad that I have been a source of inspiration!
You definitely DON’T need a gym to go outside for a run, which is part of the reason I adore running.
And you definitely don’t need a gym to get a full body strength workout. The gym is effective in that it has a bunch of weights that you can use, but seriously, pull-ups, chin-ups, push-ups, squats, lunges, burpees, wall squats, wall balls, tabata exercises, can all be done in the comfort of your own home/backyard/garage.
There’s so many body weight exercises that are great for you, and one of the reasons why I go to the gym is to be able to eventually hold my own weight.
.-= Jess´s last blog ..Weigh-in #16 =-.
Yes I agree that you don’t need a gym to workout. For me though knowing that I’m paying that $40.00 a month makes me more likely to get up and workout than it does not having a membership to a gym (if that made any sense).