So, our gym memberships for both the icky gym which I haven’t been to in over a year and the city rec center both ran out this month. We were just going to renew the rec one, and then some friends in our neighborhood told us about one that had a rock climbing wall. I have been wanting to rock climb for years. And it had three pools: an Olympic length lap pool, an indoor fun pool and an outdoor one. I drooled.

So when everything got ironed out with Vladimir’s new job, and I got Vue book proofs done, we wandered over there to take a look. The child center there rocked, and that was the clincher. Little one loves it. Runs in there every time I go.

A bit later I got called in for a fitness evaluation, which is really an appointment with a personal trainer to sell me on their services. They definitely had a jaded customer coming in. Just give me the numbers please and let’s dispense with the pitch.

At the very least, the guys at this gym have more training. When I mentioned my over use injury a couple of years ago, the guy said all the right things about it, sounding a lot like what I’d heard from my physical therapist. The conversation was less script driven than before, but even the script was much more positive. My weight is 10 lbs more than when the personal trainer at the other gym evaluated me here, and rather than suggesting I lose another 10 lbs, I was told it was good. All we wanted to work on was body fat ratio. That impressed me. The trainer at the icky gym, when I knew I was very near the low range of my weight, told me that I would be much hotter of I lost another 10 lbs.

Still, to be honest the price is out of our range right now. It is their goal to sell me their services, so I had to put up with “Isn’t this a priority?” etc and being made to feel just a twinge of guilt when I had to turn them down. I hate the “buy right now” attitude that seems to be part of the schpeel with every gym. I know the whole psychology behind why this method is used, and I get that they really have to turn over a profit. I just don’t like to be the object of it, even if I’m fairly sure I like the service.

The bottom line is that here, at least, if I were to spend my money I think I’d trust the service much more. Even so, I think I’d rather spend my money on a triathlon coach.

(edit: I mean no disrespect to the employees mentioned in this post. In fact, I feel bad for them. That’s a rough thing to have to do for half the work day.)

My inhouse babysitters are back at school, so it’s gym season for me again. This means I’m a new face to some of the “personal fitness trainers”. Actually it is rather odd that they all seem to be new faces to me. That means there is a lot of turn around in this job. We’ll come back to that, later.

I’m supersetting my thigh abductors and adductors, and one of these fresh new trainers approaches me. None of them at all realize I’m the one that scribbled “Stop using scare tactics!” on their signup board this spring. They had a sign telling people that they will get fat because of something or another. There was always some different reason that we would get fat.

What is his comment to me? That by doing the exercises that I was doing at the time, my hips would get wider.

Oh no! I might gain some muscle there.

He continued on through his shpeel that he thought was sage advice about exercise. I nodded and smiled, nodded and smiled. I dropped a few hints that I knew what I was doing, he continued on. I dropped the triatholon bit, I dropped the “under the care of physical therapists” bit. I nodded and smiled. But it became clear the kid had to wind through the whole thing. He finally ran out of steam by asking if I was good on my nutrition. I nodded, mentioned the whole wheat bread I’d made that morning before my workout. I’m the mother of four, blah, blah.

The fact of the matter is that these trainers charge a lot of money, and they don’t seem to have a lot of real knowledge about what it truly means to be fit and healthy. Remember the high turnover I talked about? This is a job for them, not a passion. When they go back to school, or find a better job, they’ll quit. If I’m going to pay someone to be my personal trainer, I want someone who loves helping people reach their top form, and really can address the unique needs of my body and structure. 

These kids who are posing as trainers really only have a workout manual, a diet, a notebook, and a bit of encouragement they’re selling. Well, they probably can also spot for bad form.I’ve heard their memorized info about three times now. They’ve been given a predefined goal of creating a skinny model type body for women, and from what I’ve seen their repertoire does not seem to go beyond that.

Now, I understand that there probably is a subset of people who can use this kind of service. But for the rest of us, they have to make us think we need them. And that involves trying to make us feel, in one way or another, helpless.

That is the last thing that a person just starting out on physical fitness needs. I really wish the gym would have more encouragement for people, but I see also that their structure is set up to make money in good part by selling membership contracts to people who are excited at first, such as in new years resolutions, but quickly lose steam. They don’t make nearly as much money on people like me who utilize the gym and the kids playroom 5 days a week. Encouragement and helpful advice not laced with another sell would lower their profit margin.

They don’t know it yet, but they have lost me as a customer. When this membership runs out, I’m going to the city owned gym. At least it has an indoor track, which I enjoy much more than the treadmill. And I get to watch water or basketball on the stationary bike.

And someday, the little toddler will be in kindergarten and I’ll be able to stay outdoors for my running and biking until winter threatens to freeze the rubber on my tires.

I didn’t give weight loss ads and the push to lose weight much thought until I lost weight myself. When it came into my sphere of “paying attention”, I started to get angry. Before I go on about marketing, let me tell you how I came to lose weight.

For most of my life, thinness was just part of who I was, and not something I needed to reach for. But I got older, had some kids, and ate entire bags of cereal while I read. I found myself several pounds overweight. Even then, it wasn’t much of a worry, because I was healthy and happy.

But shortly after delivering my last baby, my blood pressure became elevated. There were a lot of stressful things going on in my life in addition to having a baby.  The blood pressure was high enough that the doctor wanted to check it weekly to decide if I needed to go on blood pressure medication. No way, I thought. I needed to get back in control.

I decided that my course of action was to exercise. This would give me several benefits. Exercise reduces stress, lowers blood pressure, and increases endurance. As an added bonus, I would lose weight too. The added bonus certainly was desirable and admittedly what I looked forward to the most, but to me it felt like the reward for doing something healthy for my body, not the goal I was actually trying to achieve: lower blood pressure and better stress control.

I got all that, and I got more weight loss than I’d even thought to want. I’m nearly as skinny now as before I had kids. The same size, in fact. But here is the kicker: I weigh a good 10 lbs more. Before kids I was 122, now I’m about 132. Do you know what that extra weight means? It means I’m a healthier than I was before. I have more muscle power, more endurance, greater speed, and a better heart rate than I ever had in my life.

Right after I achieved that, I was approached by a personal trainer trying to sell me the services of his company. His selling point was “You can’t do it on your own.” On the radio and TV are constant advertisements for weight loss pills, programs, and diets.

Suddenly, after losing weight, I realized that there is a huge marketing campaign aimed at us, at its message is clear.

We need to lose weight and we are helpless on our own.

There is only one problem. I don’t need to lose weight. Losing weight now would mean losing muscle, bone, and/or the essential fat my body needs to utilize, manufacture, and store certain vitamins and hormones, as well as being an important energy reserve. I needed that reserve recently when I had my tonsils removed.

But the message doesn’t stop. Over and over again I hear that I need to lose weight. And that isn’t the only message I’m getting. I need to have my body hair removed. I need to go the the dermatologist so that he can stop my skin from getting ugly because I’m getting ‘gasp!’ older. At the gym I’m forced to stare at a poster advertising “sexy surgery” and “get a bust” while I’m on the treadmill.

All around me are images of such perfection they are unattainable. Models, who spend most of the hours of their lives obsessed with their looks so they can keep their job and status, are photographed under tightly controlled lighting and coloring. After that, the photos are still airbrushed. Existential ideals that have never existed are being held up as what we could be if only we purchased X.

In order to sell products and services we don’t really need, we have to be convinced that we do need them. And the message they are cramming down our throats is that we are not good enough. That is wrong.

There is very little that you can buy that will make you more beautiful than you already are. The beauty isn’t in the skin or the skinny. It is in you. Your actions, your confidence, your spirit. You don’t need them to become your ideal self. They don’t know what that is, only you do.

This is such common wisdom it is cliched, but the power of advertising is whittling away at what we all know deep inside. Take that knowledge and bring it back up to the stage of your mind. Polish it up. Be in charge of who you are, and don’t let pretty pictures bully you around.

Whenever you hear an advertisement for something, evaluate it. They are always trying to make a buck, and they want you to give it to them. But do you really need what they are selling? Is their product or service actually a part of what is the best you that you can be? Do they really have your best interest at heart?