Being Old at the Gym Is the Best
Forget “leg day.” Every day is “whatever feels good day.”
In my 30s and 40s I was a gym rat. I would get up as early as 5:00 a.m. to exercise hard, driven by the fear of becoming fat. With free weights and restricted eating, I desperately worked to stay slim and conventionally attractive (even years after becoming a wife).
When my marriage began slipping into the toilet, I gave up all exercise. What was the point? Staying thin and hot hadn’t kept my husband interested in me, so I started eating everything. When I hit size 18, he ended the marriage.
Post-divorce my gym boycott solidified. I spent years gaining weight and only got another gym membership ten months into the pandemic as a way to get out of my apartment and be around others. I returned to exercising out of sheer loneliness and because I rediscovered that physical movement feels good.
Going back into the gym in 2021 felt very different. I’d become comfortable in male-dominated gyms back in grad school, when I was a young and trim 22-year-old. In my 30s and 40s I was still slim and young-looking and occupied gym space like it was mine. I belonged there. As a 54-year-old I no longer looked young and I definitely wasn’t slim. I looked like a woman who needed a lot of fitness help and I did not look like I belonged.
