episode 215: the major change i made to my workouts
After a year and a half of working out in my basement, I did something kinda big—I went back to a commercial gym. It wasn’t planned, but the second I stepped inside, I realized I had been missing something. The energy. The variety. The feeling of pushing myself in a different way. Today, I’m breaking down why I made the switch and how to know if your workouts are still serving you.
🔹 The surprising moment that made me realize I missed the gym.
🔹 Why my basement workouts stopped being enough—and how I knew it was time for a change.
🔹 The truth about getting stronger: Are your workouts actually challenging you?
🔹 The gym vs. home workout debate—how to figure out what actually works for you.
🔹 Strength training is non-negotiable for me—here’s why it should be for you, too.
If you’re lifting weights (or thinking about it), this one’s for you.
And if you’re ready to stop spinning your wheels with dieting, coaching spots are open—click here to book a complimentary consult so we can get to know each other and see if coaching is the right fit.
-
215
[00:00:00] Hey everyone, welcome back to the diet diaries. Thanks for being here. Thanks for listening today. Thank you for taking any amount of time out of your day to listen to what I have to say. It's awesome. I really appreciate it. Um, you've never talked before. I appreciate you truly. Um, because what's a podcast?
There's nobody to listen to. So. Before I dive in, I remembered to film video today. So back up on YouTube, I've forgotten like three out of the last four weeks to film video. So, um, if you're interested in watching on YouTube, almost all of the last probably two years of episodes are on YouTube. Prior to that, I wasn't filming, but just so you know.
Um. And I also kind of post some other stuff up there if you're a YouTube person, um Quick announcement. So this episode is coming out on Monday, February 10th Prior to today. I had opened up one to one coaching spots for [00:01:00] people on my email list only Now it's opened up to everyone. Um, so I gave those first, those folks a chance to grab the spots first and also offer, also offered them a discount because I really appreciate people who, um, kind of, again, share their time, energy, and attention with me, um, via email.
Um, I connect with those folks once a week and anyway. If you are interested in coaching, if you have been struggling with yo yo dieting, feeling like shit around food, feeling like shit in your body, uh, constantly ripping yourself apart for the way you look, jumping from diet to diet, feeling like you gain weight, lose weight, um, or are just stuck in a really bad place with food.
Coaching might be the thing that is what you have been looking for. So, and there's a link in the show notes to set up a console. That's just a chance for us to talk. It's complimentary. You can share what's going on with you. I can walk you through how coaching works so we can figure out if it's a good fit.
Um, And so [00:02:00] that will be kind of these spots are open up to get started with coaching at the end of this month or early March. So if you're interested, um, that is there for you, and I have three to five spots open. So, um, and after this I won't be opening spots up again until sometime in the summer. Um, so if you're thinking about it now is a Good time.
Why not? Um, okay. So today Totally spur of the moment podcast today. I'm gonna talk about strength training and working out and being back in a gym Because today this morning was my first day back in a commercial gym in a couple years. Um, and it feels like kind of a big deal for me. And I wanted to talk about why I'm doing that.
I've talked about my experience with exercise and working out several times on the podcast. I'm going to link to the most recent one, which I did about six months ago. It's episode 189. That was really focused about my experience over that previous year of strength training. This is going to be less about that and more about, well, partially about that more about [00:03:00] why I decided to go back into a commercial gym.
Um, Because I've been working out in my basement for the last year and a half. Um, and there are so many upsides to that. And working out at home was the thing that helped me be consistent over the last year and a half. It was the right choice for me. And it was what got me back into strength training after I had taken a break for quite some time.
Um, though I have been strength training on and off since 2017, 2018. So you know, it's like a seven, eight years and really even longer than that in the big picture. Um, you know, if I go all the way back to like high school, college strength training was something that I was doing in some form again, on and off.
And sometimes those ons would be very short and the offs would be very long. Um, but it's been floating in and out of my life. I mean, since I was 17, 18 years old, um, In various ways and in various forms, but really most of that time, up [00:04:00] until I would say like six, seven years ago, my relationship with working out was not good.
It was all about weight loss and trying to change the way that I looked. Um, and it was really only in the past really handful of years that I really started to be able to shift that and look at working out as a way to build strength for systemic health, to feel good in my body, to see what my, To see and feel my body is capable of to be able to understand that my body is not just.
It's size and shape or something to be looked at. It is a body that literally carries me, is, is the, is my interaction with life and with the world. And it is, we're so used to looking at our bodies and thinking about our bodies as well. What does it look like? What's its size? What's its shape? What's its appearance?
When really that is like, Maybe like the smallest aspect, the smallest or least important feature of what a human body is and does [00:05:00] and what the experience is of living in a human body. And strength training has been such a powerful, impactful tool for connecting with that and using it to help improve my body.
Imagine the way I feel about myself. Um, And so, You know, just a little bit of like a, a, a look back, right, I kind of started to already mention this. Um, you know, in high school and college, I was definitely working out. Certainly in college, it really ramped up because I was using it as a way to manage my disordered eating.
Um, and I remember in college, I did a lot of cardio and would do 20 minutes on the, treadmill, 20 minutes on the bike, 20 minutes on the elliptical. So an hour straight of just like steady state cardio. Um, and I do cardio now, but for very different reasons. At the time, it was like, just how long can I be on here without being like mind numbingly bored, even though I was, and I [00:06:00] was doing that many days a week.
Um, not a ton of strengthening, strength training, but some, the big thing that I was into around this time. was Taibo, right? So this is the late 90s, kind of like mid to late 90s. Um, so if you are around the same age as me or a little bit older, a little bit younger, you might remember the Taibo videos. This was on VHS tape.
Um, and it was like a kickboxing class, but you didn't have any equipment. It was like, you know, kind of like air kickboxing. Um, and I remember doing them. In the common room of my dorm freshman year. Like, I think back to that now and I'm like, wow, wasn't I like embarrassed to be doing that and maybe I was and I didn't care or maybe I didn't care.
I don't know but I I Guess I didn't I mean, I definitely had space in my room to do it You don't need a lot of space, but I remember doing it in the common room of my dorm Um, I had been doing it in high school Um, and so I brought those tapes with me and [00:07:00] did them through a good part of college. My junior, junior year, I lived in a single and the single dorm room was like 10 by 10.
I was great to have my own room, but it was tiny and I would do it in my room. Like you really didn't need a lot of space, but I was pretty like obsessive about these and felt like they were the way that I could. kind of control or respond to my food intake, right? Like where I would overeat or have a binge and it's like, okay, well I'll do a workout and very often tybo or it was like an excessive cardio session.
Um, and this wasn't I really wasn't like building a ton of strength at this time, but, um, so a lot of like high school and college years was very like, and even beyond that was very much about, um, calorie burn and either preempting what I was going to eat, like, so that I could eat. Overeat, or on the back end, trying to compensate for what I had eaten, right?
And, um, it's a really stressful, [00:08:00] fucked up place to live for a lot of reasons. Um, and that's not really the point of this podcast today, but I, over the years, have done personal training at really high end gyms, I did personal training at Equinox in the city. Um, I did hot yoga for a long time, Bikram yoga, which is like the original, very hardcore hot yoga.
The same 26 poses for every class, about 90 minutes. Um, then I did like regular heated vinyasa. I did club KO, which is like kickboxing, but like with a bag and a lot more like contact. Um, for many years, I tried to force myself to be a runner. Um, a very good friend of mine out of college worked for a consulting company was really good at building Excel models.
And he built me a model in Excel to like track my running training, which in, in theory is like really cool, but I fucking hated running and thought that like, that would be the thing to make me do it. Um, lots of different bootcamp classes, orange theory I did for a while after Ben was born. Um, I mean, bar classes, so [00:09:00] much different stuff over the years.
And I would do it for six months, a year would be on the long side of it, and then like move on to the next. And like, nothing would really change. Kind of stick and because all of it was in an effort. Like what's the most challenging? What's burning calories? Why am I not seeing results? Well, there's a million reasons for that stuff.
But when your relationship with exercise is fueled from a very negative Self destructive place it becomes very hard to stick with something because you're not really getting any positive benefits from it. Um, And for me, my relationship with food was so disordered during this time that like exercise Even though I thought it was going to compensate for that, like, never could.
It wasn't until, it was in 2018, I found, um, Sohee Lee, who at the time was like not very well known, but is now like pretty well known, kind of like in the strength and fitness world. And she's awesome. Um, and she did some programming for me and that was when I got into strength training and I joined Crunch, [00:10:00] which is a big commercial gym.
Obviously, everyone knows that. Um, or I think they do. And I was working out there. Um, and I did that on and off for several years. Um, and that was really when I started to like lift heavy and get into like dead lifting and bench pressing and using barbells and I really liked it. Sorry, I'm having a Diet Coke.
Mountain Diet Coke for Mondays. Um, and was on and off with that. And then, you know, I'm like spending a lot more time talking about my history than I guess I really wanted to. Um, but the whole point of this is that I have been in and out of a gym and different workouts for a very long time. And I went back into a commercial gym today for the first time since I went with, I went with Danny a month ago cause he belongs here and it was New Year's Eve and he was like, Oh, come with me.
I was like, okay. I was just for fun. I wasn't expecting. I was just like, Oh, go for fun. It's his guest. And I was like, Oh my God, I really miss this. I really want to be back here. And so I [00:11:00] decided to make the investment because It's not crazy expensive, but it's not super cheap, so it's more expensive than working out in your basement, um, and get back in there.
And there's a couple of reasons that I've done that, and that's really what I want to talk about. Uh, so thanks for hanging in there with me today. This is a little bit of like a, not like a kind of like, it's like a little bit of like a different kind of episode. Um, I didn't realize how much I missed it.
Um, the feeling of being in a gym. Now this is a, what's called like a private boutique gym. So basically it's It's 24 hours, but there's only, there's a very set limited number of people who belong to this gym. So at most, there's probably like, honestly, like five to 10 people in there at a time. Um, it's not like a huge space, so it's kind of a very different experience, but you're in a gym, there's music playing, there's people around.
It's different than being in your basement, right? It's different feels, different vibe. I'm leaving the house to go do this thing. which is very deliberate, very intentional, and feels really good. Um, so [00:12:00] that was part of it. After working out in my basement for a year and a half, I kind of didn't realize it until I walked in there, like how much I had missed that and how good it felt to be in that environment again.
Another piece of it is there's just way more equipment. So, I mean, we have like a nice little outfit in our basement, and by that I mean we have a really good variety of dumbbells, a few kettlebells, a bench, and I have TRX bands. Um, or ropes, whatever they're called, that are anchored into like a stud in our wall.
Um, and I've been able to do a really good amount with those. We have dumbbells ranging from 10 all the way up to 55. We don't have every increment in between. We probably have like, maybe like, I don't know, 10 sets somewhere in there. But after a year and a half of strength training, like I was kind of maxing out on that stuff.
Like, I'm basically maintaining my strength. I was getting bored with exercises. You start, you just start to get more limited. Um, and so for me, after a year and a half, I was starting to get kind of bored [00:13:00] with stuff. My trainer, Gina, who's still my trainer, who's still programming for me and is now programming for me in a gym, which is like, she's very excited that I'm back doing this was doing her best to keep it creative and keep me going.
But I could definitely feel that I was like petering out, but just like needing a little bit more. And again, like I went with Danny that day, just expecting to just go and do a workout there and I'm like, holy shit, it is so nice to have all of this. Like, I was so excited to get under a barbell and do a bench press and it just felt really good.
Like, it's just different than like lugging out the dumbbells and whatnot. Using a barbell is a fucking badass awesome experience, and if you have never picked one up, I really encourage you to go get a guest pass if you don't belong to a commercial gym, get a guest pass, go with a friend, and pick up a barbell.
There are standard barbells 45 pounds, which might be too heavy, and that's totally fine. There are lighter ones, definitely 35 pounds, and the gym might even have a 25 [00:14:00] pound one. Um, You can definitely pick a 35 pound dumbbell, a barbell, up off the floor because the way the weight is distributed it's very different than picking up dumbbells.
Like you can bench press a lot more on a barbell than you can with dumbbells, which might be a little bit counterintuitive. That's physics. It's the way the weight is distributed across the bar. Like I can bench press 90 to 95 pounds, but I cannot bench press two 45 pound dumbbells. So anyway, sidebar, um, So having access to more equipment to do a bigger variety of exercises and to go up in weight, right?
Like at a certain point, if you're at the upper level of the dumbbells that you have, you're kind of like maxed out and Priorities change and shift, right? I'm not saying that working out at home is bad or that you shouldn't do it. I've done it for a year and a half. And to be honest, I'm going to continue to do it one day a week, right?
So right now Gina's programming me two days a week at the gym, one day a week at home because I want to have that [00:15:00] flexibility. So I think this is about really paying attention to where you are with your workouts and what's doable for you and what your priorities are. Um, and figuring out. How to make that work.
Like, are you challenging yourself? Are you continuing to get stronger? Are you enjoying it? Or are you starting to notice that, like, you're plateauing or you're not enjoying it? You're getting bored or you're not able to have as much variety. Maybe you need to buy, maybe if you only have three set of dumbbells, maybe you want to invest in some more equipment at home, right?
We have a pretty big set of dumbbells. To start buying more wasn't really, it wasn't going to be enough. It wasn't, it was kind of like law of diminishing returns at that point. Um, we don't have the space to buy a barbell and do a squat rack and all that. We just don't have that in our house. Our gym is in our basement, which is a seven foot ceiling.
We live in a hundred year old house. Like, I don't have the space for something like that. It's also like Ben's like hangout room with a TV. So. For me, it was like, there's not really space to [00:16:00] store more stuff or that can even accommodate. So it's all relative to where you are. I just felt like talking about my experience.
I know this is like a really kind of rambly episode, so thanks for listening. I hope it's helpful in some way. Um, but I think it's, I think really the point is that it's important to be like checking in with yourself and thinking about like, How are my workouts serving me? How am I feeling? Am I, are they helping me accomplish what I need to accomplish?
Am I enjoying them to an extent, right? You're not going to love every workout you do. You're not always going to feel like working out. Working out is part of taking care of your body. Health wise, mentally, it is a form of health and self care. And so we don't always feel like doing things like that. And we do them anyway.
So this isn't about like loving everything, but it is about getting some enjoyment or some pleasure out of it. And so for me, being in a commercial gym brings a lot of pleasure. This, honestly, I will probably at a certain point, I don't know how long. Maybe go back to working out at [00:17:00] home at some point exclusively in a couple of years.
Um, I think that this, this is the flexibility that I have with this and the proximity of the gym to my house is really nice. Like the last commercial gym I was at was 15 minutes away. And it's hard to be a lot. This is like seven minutes. Um, so there's like logistics of things like that too. This is a little bit more expensive than that was, but it's a lot closer, right?
It's like, what are the triangle of time, money, and something? Um, so all this to say that like, I think I wanted to talk about it because I just want to talk about it and I wanted to talk about like why I made the shift from working out at home to working out at a gym and how long I spent working out at home and how valuable I think working out at home can be.
And if you are someone who is working out at home, wants to work out at home, is of You know, doesn't want to go to a gym for any reason, right? That's again, like a separate episode. Working out at home is phenomenal and you don't need a lot to start. But as you progress with strength training, you do need [00:18:00] more, right?
At a certain point, a set of like ten 20 and 30 pound dumbbells isn't going to cut it. Um, that's just, that's just reality. So you can either start to build out more and buy more, or you can transition into a place that's going to have more for you. And that's partially where I was at. Um, and that was me being honest with myself and saying, okay, well, if I want to get stronger and continue to take care of my body in the way that I need to and want to, I have to put in this effort, um, and this commitment financially and time wise.
In order to do so and it felt really good and it was really fun And it was so nice to have like more of these options today and to know that there's just more variety There's like a full set of dumbbells I had I had gotten a customizable set of dumbbells or like little mini barbells So you can take plates on and off and so they're really efficient space wise and financially because you can get lots of sizes out of them But it's also a pain in the ass because you're constantly pulling the clip off, moving the plates, putting them back on.
So that gets annoying, [00:19:00] right? Like there's always something that's going to be annoying. There's always going to be some level of discomfort. Right now it's like, okay, well now I got to drive to the gym. That was like changing the plates on the barbell. It's like, nothing is ever going to be perfect. I guess, unless you have like an amazingly outfitted gym in your home.
But then that's also like there's not other people around it's like a different vibe than being in a gym Like, you know the feeling if you've ever been to a group fitness class, there's a feeling of like being in a class There's like an energy there and it's just different and there is something to be said for that and I was missing that and I Was ready to like bring that back in So, you know strength training I am turning 45 this year and on July um Strength training, again, has been part of my life in some form for a very long time, with some level of consistency over the past, like, eight ish years, with even more consistency over the past, like, couple of years.
And it needs to be, and it is an absolute priority for me, moving forward, [00:20:00] um, and continuing to be. Um, and I hope. That me kind of sharing my journey, I fucking hate that word, but I use it sometimes, with you, gets you going. Like, I have several clients that I have worked with that have struggled with this, understandably.
It's hard. Um, and have made so much progress working out at home. Clients who are like, I don't know how to work out, I'm not someone who works out, I'm not an exerciser, I dread doing this. who now strength train several times a week at home and have been able to make it work at home. And as they continue to progress and build strength, we've figured out ways, we've bought some additional equipment, we've changed up the movements, um, to continue to kind of increase challenge.
So there is a lot of variety depending on where you are at in your journey, right? If you're just starting out or if you've been strength training for five years, um, And depending on what your goals are, it's all kind of relative. I just wanted to kind of share where I'm at, um, which will continue to shift and [00:21:00] evolve.
And just cause I was excited about it today. So thanks for listening. I know this is a bit of like a weird episode. Um, with no real skills to offer today other than maybe getting you thinking about the role of strength training in your life. Are you doing what you need to to take care of yourself? Are you challenging yourself?
Um, heavy is relative, right? What's heavy for me might be light for someone else or heavy for someone else. But when you are strength training, truly strength training, it needs to feel heavy. It needs to feel challenging. And picking up a weight 15, 20 times is not bad, all movement is good movement, that is likely not going to get you the strength that you need or want.
Picking up weights that feel heavy for like six to eight, maybe like ten reps, that's where you want to be. So if you don't have weights that are heavy enough for that, um, something to think about. And if you do, awesome, keep going, keep challenging yourself. And that's it. And again, if you're interested in coaching, set up a consult, [00:22:00] we'd love to chat.
And, um, that's all. More soon.