I suspect those gym owners aren’t worried about you working out and turning into a Schwarzenegger—they’re just afraid you’ll be too self-disciplined, and stick with it.

Last month I went to sign up for a membership. The trainer kept pushing me to buy an annual pass. I told him I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to keep it up. He said, “You absolutely will,” then pulled out a calculator and started tapping away: “Come three times a week. Over a year, your cost per visit comes out to less than a cup of Mixue Ice City. But if you buy a single-visit pass, it’s eighty per visit.”
I asked him, “If I really come three times a week, wouldn’t you guys be the ones losing money?”
He tossed the calculator aside, leaned back against the chair, and laughed: “Sis, to be honest, the money we make is because you won’t be able to come that many times. We’re betting you’ll last at most two months.” When he said that, he was so calm, like he was just talking about the nice weather today.
At the time, I even thought he was trying to provoke me into it with reverse psychology. Now three months have passed, and I still have more than three hundred unused visits left on my card. Every time I pass by that gym and, through the floor-to-ceiling windows, see people sweating it out inside, I think of his smile. He won the bet.