The Gym is Not Care

Is encouraging your friend to go to the gym really an act of love?

Photo by Fuu J on Unsplash

I have a friend, and she’s the kind who lights up a room without knowing it. Funny, generous, always remembers your coffee order but she herself doesn’t drink coffee, and shows up when things get hard. She also happens to be fat. And for as long as I have known her, someone in her life has been suggesting the gym.

The other day, I was sitting in a lecture when my ethics professor turned to a room full of engineering students and asked: “How do you show care?” And you know, of course being present, putting in time, showing up — all the good stuff. But one answer stopped me cold, someone said “by encouraging your friend to go to the gym.”

In my head I was like but how is that care?

I turned to the lady next to me and shared my confusion quietly. She said maybe they meant a friend who wants to go but just can’t find the motivation — like just a little nudge. So okay touché. But again how is that care, in the sense of why does your friend want to go to the gym? Bear with me here.

The thought got me to my friend. And I was thinking to myself, if you genuinely care about someone, why on earth would the gym be your first suggestion?

The gym, for a lot of people, is not a place of empowerment. It’s a place of comparison. You walk in and you are immediately surrounded by bodies that look nothing like yours — all toned, sculpted, moving with a kind of ease that feels like it was never earned, just given. Some people call this motivation, but really this is just low-grade, sustained self-hate dressed up in activewear. You don’t heal your relationship with your body by putting it in a room that constantly reminds you of everything it isn’t. Philosophers have a term for this, The tyranny of the ideal: when an imagined version of perfection becomes the standard against which reality is judged. Inevitably, your body is no longer experienced for what it is, only criticized for what it isn’t.

This is not care.

Being healthy — and I mean truly healthy, not just green salads only every day — does not look like grinding on a treadmill in a room full of strangers while you try not to look at yourself in the mirror. It looks like moving your body in ways that feel joyful and human. It looks like hiking and actually looking up long enough to notice the trees and flashes of colour in the birds around you. Trail running where the reward isn’t a calorie count, but the quiet satisfaction of covering ground under your own power. Swimming, cycling, dancing badly in your kitchen — any of it. Movement that makes you feel alive rather than inadequate.

And food? Eating well doesn’t mean only eating greens and suffering through it. It means actually nourishing yourself. Cooking with people you love. Eating food that makes you feel good in the hours after, not just virtuous in the moment.

Let’s also talk about money, because the cost of ‘caring’ adds up faster than people admit. A decent gym membership runs from $20 to $300 per month. That’s before classes, gym kit, protein shakes, and of course the right shoes. Because the real cost comes from a whole aesthetic you’re expected to buy into before you’ve even broken a sweat. It hits hardest on the people who have the most to gain from being active and the least money to spare.

Care that costs money the other person doesn’t have isn’t care. It’s obliviousness with good intentions.

A walk through the neighbourhood costs nothing. A swim at a public pool is a fraction of the price. Cooking a meal together is an act of care that nourishes the body and the mind at the same time.

All this to say, care or love really doesn’t look like a gym referral. It looks like suggesting a walk somewhere beautiful, where the conversation carries you further than your legs do. It looks like cooking food together and actually sitting down to eat it. It looks like being the kind of company that makes someone feel good about being in their body, not embarrassed by it. It’s choosing your friend over the aesthetic.

My friend doesn’t need a membership. She never did. She needs the people around her to stop treating her body like a project and start treating her like a person.

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