Men who no longer workout, what made you stop?

49 comments

  2. My workout is running after 2 kids all day. I’m not sacrificing sleep just to go to the gym only to come back to panicky text that they woke up early and my wife needed my help and that sneaking in a shower is going to be a chore in itself

  3. I work in the record heat moving heavy shit all day. I wanna get home and take a damn shower. I’m not touching the gym at least until late October.

  4. Work and life, I honestly want the motivation to go back to the gym, but life keeps getting in the way.

  5. Covid. I used to lift at the gym every day, then they shut down for over a year. I’ve never been much for cardio and debated buying stuff for a home gym, but prices for weights went through the roof- now I’m just out of the habit

  7. For me, it’s mostly been due to injuries. I treated my body like a crash dummy when I was younger, and now I’m limited in what I can do. Can’t run anymore (knees and ankles), can’t squat anymore (4 fractured vertebrae and compressed discs), can’t really put too much stress on shoulders… so it’s down to yoga and swimming for me, and I hate swimming.

  8. Cancer and never being able to get the drive to go back to it. Plus I’m still pretty athletic looking so it let’s me convince myself I don’t need to go.

  9. I stopped for a few years because I thought I didn’t have time. I bought a bench, barbells and dumbells for my basement and workout with my wife a few days a week.

    A few hundred dollars covered the weights and now I don’t have to drive 10 minutes to the gym and back.

  12. Getting into rock climbing. I never liked going to the gym, but climbing is a great workout and isn’t something I force myself to do so I enjoy it way more.

  14. Developed seizures, took two years off to focus solely on learning regulate them. Started back up in 2020 which, I’m sure that I don’t have to explain why I stopped again then. Unfortunately the stress of the pandemic pushed me into having even more severe seizures that caused temporary nerve damage. Finally close to fully healed so I’ve been doing small exercises little by little since the start of summer

  15. My fitness partner, after losing 100lbs, died in his sleep. I immediately stopped riding my road bike and it took me a year to process his death.

  16. Honestly, it’s not about time, it’s about energy, both physical and mental.

    At the end of the day, I am mentally exhausted. I don’t want to do something that involves even more planning, counting, tracking, juggling logistics, etc. I want to let my brain have a rest and just zone out while watching Godzilla movies and mindlessly surfing online. But even if I’m just running on a treadmill, I cannot zone out – my mind stays active and compulsively thinks, often about work. Add in planning when and how to work out, and I mentally recoil, because it’s yet another damn responsibility to manage, yet another time constraint to work around, yet another thing to plan and track, yet another obligation to feel bad about missing. Literally all day every day (including all weekend) is a non-stop series of “you need to do ____”, and voluntarily adding more onto it is pure masochism.

    Then there’s the physical exhaustion. I don’t know whose ass this “exercise increases your energy” horshit was pulled from, because once I work out, I have a maximum of one hour before I fall asleep wherever I am and sleep for 10+ hours. Morning, evening, doesn’t matter – naptime is happening immediately afterwards, whether I like it or not. Holding it off requires enough coffee to give me heart palpitations. I’ve also never been sick as often in my life as when I worked out. I also feel like I’ve been run over for the next two days. Seriously, I’ve had six-foot mildly-venomous snakes chew venom into me for over a minute and the aftereffects didn’t feel as bad as after a regular workout.

  17. My younger brother is currently a pro athlete and has always been insanely fit. He also has extreme rage issues and would attack our mother over any disagreement. I used to work out for 2 hours every night so that I would be able to fight him. We probably got into 3 or 4 serious fights a week. But then I went to college and all of a sudden no one was trying to fight me any more. It was a weird adjustment. Without the threat of immediate physical violence, the desire to work out just sort of dissipated.

  18. I stopped during Covid and just never got back on track, although I still do cardio to keep the weight off (treadmill or biking depending on the weather)

  20. Heart break only fuel exercising passion for so long. I still work out but I did almost quit, because the fire of passion for it dwindled

  21. I only went to the gym one month and it was a February lol. Not that i didnt like it, but they raised the price the month after from 60€ for 1 month to 48€ for just 8 days. I dont have other gyms near me that are well equipped enough. Also, i have a fast metabolism and don’t gain weight anyways. Im 1,85m (6ft1) and 68 kilograms, i don’t think i’ll ever get overweight, also because my diet is quite balanced, and im happy with how i look

  22. Worked out all the way through college and was like I’m done. My body is breaking down. My knees are shot. I’m constantly hurting and I’m only 35.

  23. Realized it’s way easier to just eat less to keep at a healthy weight. I like fun exercise (swimming, biking, tennis, etc.), but sitting in a gym lifting weights, walking on a track – meh

  25. I always wonder about this. I don’t wonder about the people who never worked out or the people who just don’t know what they are doing. I wonder about the people who were in great shape at one point, so they obviously know what it takes, and then they just gave up. The only reason that makes much sense to me would be if someone sustained an injury that came with long term ramifications and they lacked self control with diet.

    I have young kids, so I wake up at 4:45am most mornings so I can knock it out before they wake up. I don’t enjoy waking up that early but I enjoy the sense of accomplishment and being able to sleep when I want to at night more than I dislike waking up early.

  26. I stopped because I didnt realize how much my body needed it. Now I’m back on it.

  27. I work a manual labor job, my day at work is my workout. And an 18 month old baby takes up pretty much all of my free time when I’m not working, I just can’t justify spending 2 hours a day in the gym when I could be spending it with him.

    It does kill me sometimes though, I used to work out religiously from like.. age 15-28

  28. My gym is a 20 minute walk away and legday means i couldn’t really walk back for a while. Ended up being a case of i’d go there, lift for an hour, then sit around for 30 minutes trying to muster up the courage to walk home. I’m also in england, so it rains a ton.

    Don’t get me wrong, i’ve still got plans to go again after i let go of this current bout of depression (yay, heartbreak) but it was one of the reasons I took a break. Luckily my job has a ton of lifting in it anyway so it isn’t so bad.

  29. I wouldn’t say I’ve completely given up working out, but I’ve definitely toned down my routine.

    I used to run 15-25 miles a week, because I wanted to lose some weight, and while I did lose weight, I also started losing hair (telogen effluvium)

    One week, I was ready to sign up for a gym, so I could swim for sport. Two days later, I lost all motivation to burn too many calories, because I didn’t want to lose anymore of my back-length hair that took me four years to grow out.

    I’m still running, because I don’t want to lose my endurance, but I noticed that I’m not as passionate about my runs anymore, and I’m running significantly less than I was before.

    Also, summer has contributed to me not wanting to exercise outside sometimes. Maybe I’ll start pushing myself once fall comes around. We’ll see.

  31. I realised I didn’t need to pick heavy things up and put them down any more. I focus on a healthy lifestyle, more time for myself and time with my kids.

  32. So I’m a 5’1 dude who thought that maybe that can be rectified by working out and fitness. Turns out I am over compensating in the eyes of both men and especially women. I went into a deep depression once I realized that there was no hope in changing how I’m perceived. It didn’t help with bullying from the opposite sex and I always felt like a nuisance to guys at the gym whenever I’d get on a machine like I’m not supposed to be there.

    Anyway, I fell into a really deep depression and I’m too big of a pussy to do anything drastic so now I kind of just isolate myself and gain weight to avoid it all.

    Therapy doesn’t help, because it doesn’t change how people view you.

    I have been told many a time by women that I am too short and they have been insulted by the mere idea of my approaching to speak with them.

    I gave up honestly. I’m 35 now and I don’t really have hope any more.

  34. It didn’t help me mentally so Instead of just being tired and drained mentally, i was tired and drained both physically and mentally

  35. I will never go to the gym. Too many eyes, fear of judgement for not knowing what I’m doing or what equipment to use for how long, and all the damn phones.. just no. Building my own workout space in the privacy of my own home.

  37. I hate it. I’ve tried, many a time. For the last 20 years. Love doing active things with a purpose, but I can’t seem to get myself to workout for the sake of working out. Again, I fucking hate it. I don’t get a “high” from it like many mention. Even when I was in top shape, I just feel like I worked out and got tired haha

  39. Graduating college (meaning I no longer had a kickass gym within walking distance) and beginning to work full time. Shameful to admit, but it’s probably also a factor that I got a girlfriend and then got married, removing the motivation of, “I need to work out and look great so I can get girls.” It wasn’t a big deal for the longest time because I was working physical jobs that kept the weight off anyway. Now my job is less physical, and I’m getting chubby again. I know I need to get back to working out. I still do very sporadically. Just haven’t gotten back into the daily grind of it like I used to.

  46. I skipped one workout and suddenly didnt workout for over a year. Gotta just stay on it no matter how tired I am. I’m back at it now though, but I got some weird pain here and there that the doctor’s answer is painkillers.

  48. I lost the motivation. All I did in the gym was half-ass use the workout machines and compared myself to others.

  49. Depression, I went from running 4 miles a day, pull-ups till I got bored, squatted double my weight, boxed, all I thought about was health and fitness, had crappy cars, but was pulling chicks, they complimented my clear skin….

    I haven’t been sober since August of 2018, I truly don’t know who I am anymore, I don’t even know what’s gonna happen tomorrow, sometimes I wanna fight back and crawl out, but for some reason the feeling of being a shell of my former self, literally and the damage I’ve caused to my body my stomach my liver my kidneys my lungs, my brain, I just don’t know anymore.

    So kids, if life hits you, you better hit back harder cus I’m telling you, if you slip,it’s a whole chapter of life, catching up is a whole other chapter in life. Good luck.

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