How can I tell the difference between a gym I’ve outgrown and a temporary loss of motivation?

For the past few months, I’ve been having thoughts that feel almost scandalous in my little world of fitness: maybe I should just give up the gym. Yes, me, the woman who could happily do four classes during the week and then turn up for three back-to-back fitness classes at the weekend.

When I write that down, it sounds faintly unhinged. At the time, it felt perfectly reasonable. I liked knowing where I would be, who would be teaching and which familiar faces would be there. I liked the music, the movement and that strange satisfaction of walking out sweaty and knowing I’d done something difficult before most people had finished their second coffee.

Most of all, I liked being the woman who showed up. The gym wasn’t just somewhere I exercised, it became part of the architecture of my week. So when I started wondering whether I should cancel my membership, I assumed I’d lost my motivation. But I think I’ve been asking myself the wrong question.

I can make a persuasive case for leaving. The membership isn’t cheap, we’re paying school fees, the timetable has changed and I’m 50 and in the middle of perimenopause. Then there is winter. Newcastle in winter does not make me want to leave a warm house wearing Lycra.

Part of it is the cold that arrives from September onwards. Not the sort of winter that makes you look cute and layered like a ski trip advert, but Newcastle winter: dark, wet, fingers numb, car windscreen requiring attention and home looking increasingly attractive.

At 5:30 p.m., I can already be wearing my gym leggings, which you’d think would indicate a fairly advanced level of commitment. Instead, I’ll stand staring through the window at the rain with a coffee, telling myself I’ll decide whether to go in five minutes. Twenty-five minutes later, I’m still drinking the coffee.

The ridiculous thing is that I may have specifically asked H to make sure he gets home from work on time so I can make the class. He does his part. I then fail to do mine. Cyrus, naturally, has noticed this pattern.

I know it’s a mindset thing because once I’m actually at the gym, I rarely regret going. The music starts, my body warms up and my brain wakes up. It’s the journey between the warm house and the front door that seems to require the motivational equivalent of climbing Mount Everest in flip-flops.

When I’m particularly reluctant, I remind myself of lockdown, when we exercised in a leaky marquee on sodden, squelchy gym mats. We were kitted out in gloves and hats while the North East weather supplied rain, hail and occasionally snow.

Nothing says commitment to fitness quite like doing squats while wondering whether the roof is equally committed to remaining above you. If I could exercise in a freezing, leaky marquee, surely I can walk into a heated gym. It’s a perfectly rational argument, although motivation has never been particularly interested in rational arguments. Usually, it works. Usually.

There have also been periods lately when I’ve just felt below par, tired and less willing to bulldoze through everything than I once was. I used to pride myself on consistency and on pretending my body was younger and tougher than it actually is. These days, my brain has become much better at presenting alternatives.

It starts innocently enough. You don’t have to go today. Tomorrow would be fine. Actually, next week would be even better. Before long, I’ve constructed an entirely plausible case for why staying home with a coffee and my laptop represents sensible life management.

I even bought new trainers. Nothing. This concerned me because new gym wear has historically been capable of producing a suspiciously rapid recovery in motivation. There are few fitness problems I haven’t previously believed could be solved by buying something stretchy. Even that wasn’t working.

There is something almost unimaginable about a consistent gym timetable being reshuffled. I appreciate that sentence makes me sound about 83, but there we are. Even when there’s a perfectly valid reason for a change, it’s a pain.

Suddenly, my beloved strength classes are too early to attend. Kids’ club clashes appear. The punchy, kicky stuff gets shuffled around spin and Zumba. A favourite instructor leaves, and what was once my glorious three back-to-back fix becomes two. I know, two. Send condolences.

I’ve been told that three consecutive classes might be too much, advice I acknowledge in much the same way I acknowledge serving suggestions on chocolate. Technically noted. But the FOMO is real because, when you’ve built exercise around classes, the timetable isn’t merely a list sitting inside an app. It is the scaffolding around your routine.

There is always the gym floor, of course. Rows of machines, weights, mirrors and people who appear irritatingly comfortable knowing precisely what they’re doing.

I can use a gym. I can lift weights. I understand that wandering around looking vaguely lost isn’t technically compulsory. But I’ve always preferred classes, usually somewhere towards the back, where exercise becomes music, movement and shared effort rather than me wondering whether somebody is waiting for the machine I’m using.

Classes also remove some of the thinking. I turn up, somebody tells me what we’re doing, I try not to kick the person next to me during combat, and eventually we all go home. Take that structure away and suddenly I’m responsible for manufacturing my own workout and motivation. Apparently, I object to this.

Gym membership isn’t cheap, and when you’re paying school fees at the same time, you do occasionally look at the household outgoings and wonder whether everybody in the family really needs quite so many expensive extracurricular interests.

Cyrus has school. I have Zumba. I’m not suggesting these are financially comparable, although there are months when I’d prefer not to examine the evidence too closely.

The cost of living makes that calculation harder. When several bills increase at once, something has to give. At the moment, it tends to be my coffees, a development I regard with appropriate seriousness, but I can’t pretend I never look at the gym membership and wonder whether it should be next. Of course I could exercise somewhere cheaper. There are cheaper gyms and different timetables, and I’m fairly certain dumbbells perform much the same function regardless of the postcode. But I’m not really comparing dumbbells.

My people are the ones who are there throughout the week, the people who say hello when I walk in and ask how I am. Not the polite how are you? where everybody knows the only acceptable response is fine. If I’ve had a bad day, I’ll say so. They do too.

They’re the friends who have taken my pulse when I’ve had a wobble. Yes, that happened. They’re the ones who have bought me a yellow smoothie when I’ve turned up having committed to fasting despite my body rather obviously suggesting that eating something might have been a better plan.

There are doctors, nurses and other professionals among the people I exercise with, people who share their knowledge and look out for one another. Then there is my Zumba crew, some of the most loving, funny people I’ve met. I’ve made friendships at the gym that have lasted for years.

The curious thing is that we don’t really go out together. We don’t regularly arrange dinners or weekends away. Our meeting place is David Lloyd. And that’s why I’ve underestimated what leaving would actually mean. I wouldn’t just be changing where I exercise, I’d be changing where I see some of my friends.

When I finally walk into a class, I’m surrounded by people who share the same basic mindset. We want to exercise, certainly, but we also want to have a good time. We want that endorphin rush that makes the person walking out feel rather different from the one who walked in.

Honesty matters to me, so if I’ve had a bad day, I’ll say I’ve had a bad day. Someone else might have had one too. There’s a bit of chat, perhaps some mutual complaining, usually some laughter, and then the music starts.

For the next hour, whatever was rattling around inside my head has to compete with remembering where my feet are supposed to go, what the instructor is doing and whether I’ve somehow travelled three metres to the left while everybody else went right. By the time the class finishes, sometimes I genuinely can’t remember why I was in such a mood when I arrived.

It isn’t therapy. But it can be remarkably therapeutic. That’s what I’m paying for too. Try putting that into a gym comparison calculator.

At some point I have to acknowledge the other thing happening here. I’m 50, and my energy isn’t identical every day. Sleep can be unpredictable. Some days I feel strong enough to throw myself around a combat class; other days getting dressed for one feels like an admin task.

There are also days when my body feels more cavewoman than gym woman. I’ve eaten too much pizza, my leggings feel less forgiving than I remember and the mirror and I are not currently corresponding.

But exercise can’t only count when I feel slim, energetic, motivated and pleased with my reflection in the mirror. If I waited for all four to occur simultaneously at 50, I could be waiting some time. What I do need to get better at is asking: Do I not want to exercise, or do I actually need to rest? Those aren’t the same thing.

This is where I think a lot of fitness advice gets midlife women wrong. We’re often given one of two instructions: listen to your body or no excuses, show up. Real life is considerably less scripted.

Sometimes listening to my body means going to bed. Or it means recognising that I’ve spent 20 minutes inventing increasingly sophisticated reasons not to go to Zumba and should probably put the coffee cup down.

There are evenings when staying home is exactly what I need. There are others when my body is perfectly capable of exercising and my brain would rather open the laptop and disappear down another Saffron & Cyrus rabbit hole. Sometimes I just can’t be bothered and that’s allowed too.

There are days when the answer is to stop conducting negotiations with myself. I pull on the Sweaty Betty leggings, lace up the trainers, and put on what I privately think of as my war paint and go.

Not because I’m fighting my body. I’m increasingly bored by fitness language that suggests women need to declare war on themselves. But sometimes I need gym clothes, hair sorted, keys, car, music, front door.

If I can get that far, there’s a good chance I’ll be pleased I went. Even if I’ve eaten too much pizza, or standing at the back. Even if my cavewoman body has turned up with me, she gets to exercise too.

This isn’t the first time I’ve contemplated a dramatic exit. Classes disappearing from the timetable have done it. The old black marks for non-attendance were a particular bugbear. Nothing brings out my inner revolutionary quite like paying a substantial membership fee and then feeling reprimanded for failing to use it correctly.

There have been moments when I’ve thought, Right, that’s it. I’ll go somewhere else. And yet I’m still there. When I look at those moments properly, the irritation is usually about something surrounding the experience: a timetable, a policy, the price, winter or getting there. The actual experience of exercising with these people is the bit I don’t want to lose.

There is another reason I’ve started thinking about the cost, and this one makes me unexpectedly sad. I know my gym obsession can’t last forever.

One day I’ll retire, and unless retirement turns out to be considerably more financially stable than I’m anticipating, there may come a point when I can’t justify paying for David Lloyd anymore. What bothers me isn’t the prospect of never exercising again. I’ll find another way. I’ll walk, lift weights somewhere cheaper and probably still attempt Zumba.

It’s the thought of not seeing the people. I’ve watched members leave before. Everybody says they’ll stay in touch, and sometimes we do in the loose modern sense. We see one another on Instagram and Facebook, leave a heart under a photograph and occasionally say we really must catch up. Then life happens.

I’m useless at staying in touch, which is unsurprising given that I spend so many of my spare hours at the gym. The gym solves that problem for me. I don’t have to organise these friendships, compare diaries or remember to send the WhatsApp message I’ve been meaning to send for three weeks. I turn up and they’re there.

This is the point I’ve been circling around. I don’t think I actually want to leave my gym. I think I want getting there to feel as easy as it used to.

And it doesn’t. Some of that is practical because the timetable has changed. Some is physical because I’m 50 and at a stage of life where energy and recovery aren’t predictable. Some is financial because the cost of family life means I can’t pretend an expensive membership exists in isolation. And quite a lot of it is seasonal. Winter me needs considerably more persuasion than summer me.

But once I’m actually there, I’m generally pleased I came. I see familiar faces, the music starts, my body warms up and my brain engages. An hour later, I’m walking out feeling considerably better than the woman who was sitting in gym leggings drinking coffee at 5:30 p.m. while Cyrus confidently predicted my failure.

For me, the answer is usually yes. Annoyingly. Which means cancelling my membership probably wouldn’t solve the problem I’m experiencing at the moment.

I started with a fairly simple thought: maybe I should just give up the gym. I’ve ended up somewhere rather different. The equipment could be replaced. The building could be replaced. I could find another Zumba class, another set of weights and another treadmill to avoid. The people aren’t quite so easy.

For now, I can afford to stay. For now, despite extortionate school fees, rising costs, timetable changes and the occasional sacrifice of my coffee habit, I still value what happens when I walk through those doors. One day that calculation may change. That makes me sad, but it also makes me appreciate what I have now.

Fitness can change with me. Maybe I do more strength training and fewer classes, some weeks I turn up four times and others twice. Maybe I rest or occasionally choose writing over Zumba and the world continues rotating. I haven’t given up the gym. I’m renegotiating the terms. But I’ll still complain when they move my favourite class, obviously. I’m evolving, not performing miracles.

Right now, I do. Even if getting me through it in winter remains something of a family project.

Was it the cost, the timetable, a change in your life or simply a period when getting through the door became harder? And if you’ve found “your people” somewhere you regularly go, what happens to those friendships when you eventually stop going there?

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