How My Friends Gamble to Stay Healthy

From the casino to the gym

Four years ago I found myself in the middle of the Spartan Battle of Thermopylae. Only instead of ~300 soldiers fighting to the death for pride and country, it was ~300 pounds piercing my eyes on the scale.

Not an envious place to be for someone with a high-stress job living in a tropical country where walking 5 minutes to get lunch looked like I went for a 2-hour jog.

The solution? Quit my career and start writing online, of course.

Oops.

But I also rekindled an old passion. Hitting la gymme, as they don’t say in France.

I’ve always loved the gym.

It encompassed a passion for numbers, a way to improve, could be performed in introverted bliss—and as I realized far later in life—the best stress relief money can’t buy.

Having a bad day? Go pound out a HIIT reverse pyramid one-hour weight session and I guarantee you’ll stop ruminating on that cashier who short-changed you just because you forgot to say hello and may or may not have sneezed in her face.

But I digress.

Weightlifting for me has been a return to a mental state not of serenity, but far more neutrally relaxed than I’ve had in years. And it’s been an interesting journey. As I stand today, I’m down to 215 pounds with a crapload of muscle and a slowly shrinking beer belly that once put Barney Gumble to shame.

As life has passed by, most people in their 30s and over’s weight tends to go in the same direction:

Something like:

Yes, I know, I am great artiste.

But you recognize that trend, right? It’s due to those lovely fad diets a $58 billion /yr diet industry loves pumping down our throats with mentions of:

• "Lose 50 pounds in one week with our miracle pill! It’s called ipecac and doctors don’t want you to know about it!”

• "Unleash the secret to rapid weight loss with our exclusive program. Become an unpaid intern at our organic holistic sweatshop retreat and you’ll get the body you always dreamed of!"

• "Lose weight without exercise, counting calories, or feeling hungry. Death cures all ailments!"

Fuck those companies and their grifting ways.

Forged From Fat

I wanted to forge a different path, one that overcame my most common lifelong tendency from the past—abandoning goals. And on a quest to stop giving up (while somehow not giving up on the goal), I discovered a few things that might be obvious to others:

1. Habits make the person.

2. Linking a pleasurable task to a less desirable one can significantly boost your motivation to complete it.

3. If you eat shit for breakfast, you’ll feel like shit all day. (Plus, you’ll have to live with the knowledge that you eat feces. Even if it is delicious. [I don’t judge.])

I made going to the gym a habit, not by telling myself I need to go, but by reminding myself it makes me feel better mentally.

I started only listening to podcasts when I exercise. Want to catch up on the rest of a long juicy episode of Behind the Bastards? Whelp. Better go for a walk, bike, or gym session.

I’m not ashamed (but should be) to say I binge eat from time to time. I still do, but I do it healthier. Rice, chicken, and veggies multiplied by a shitload still technically makes a binge, but the calories are far less. Plus, I eat way less chips now.

I miss them.

Keeping these three ideas in mind slowly worked their way into leaving my mind. As in, they became automatic, for the most part. Only a break in the routine from the somewhat monotonous (post-covid) life of a failing writer ex-pat in Asia tends to break my healthy routines.

But I always find my way back—I simply need the habits now. They’re a part of me.

Fight to Maintain

The thing about breaks in routine is we often know when they’re coming. A new job being started requires a complete shift in schedule. Moving house means new distances to the gym and localities to explore. Flying home for 6 weeks means a total upheaval of daily habits.

But you can fight back a little.

That’s when my friends and I came up with an interesting little challenge. We’re a particularly lazy group of friends with a particularly fond love of beer and poker. During one of the last bouts of these combined enjoyments, a thought popped up in my brainsticle.

Why not use one to help the other?

That is, gamble on our health!

Around 4 months ago before my long overdue trip back home, I asked them if they’d be interested in committing to a calisthenic exercise goal for the month.

For those unaware, calisthenics is the art of contorting your body into various shapes, often accompanied by grunts and groans, in the pursuit of a better-looking physique and the occasionally amused onlooker.

Anyway, I heard a resounding “F*ck off!” as two bottles flew by my head. So I had to backtrack and restart.

“What if there was money involved?”

And church began its session.

What We Did

The premise started simple but grew unnecessarily complicated as the monthly challenges went on.

Month 1:

• 40 burpees a day

• 25 days of burpees

• Out of 31 days total

Results:

• The quick realization of just how out of shape we all were. When was the last time you tried 10 burpees?! Hot damn.

• Only 2 people out of 6 finished

• The other 4 of us had to pay $3 per day to each person that completed more days than them.

• Ex. I completed 21 days, so I had to pay $3 x 4 = $12 to each of the 2 winners

• We all had a blast.

Month 2:

We knew the first month was a bit too hard, so we did some deliberating and came up with a simpler plan.

• 100 pushups a day

• 24 days

• Out of 30 days total

Results:

• Pushups are kind of fun.

• All 8 of us finished so no money was exchanged.

• A new question arose and hasn’t stopped since: “How many pushups can you do in a row?” For me, that’s now 65, which is pretty crazy to me.

Month 3:

Now that we were all addicted to pushups, we wanted to spread the muscle-building love to the other parts of our aging bodies.

• Tier 1: 100 repetitions of any relevant exercise

• Tier 2: 200 reps

• 20 days

• Out of 28 days total

We’re almost done this competition as we speak, and I have to say, I’m not looking forward to figuring out who owes what at the end. Excel will be involved and/or an international finance expert.

Why is this so awesome?

I can’t share numbers like person X lost Y amount of weight or gain Z amount of muscle. That’s not the point of this project. The true goal to start this was to get people—especially 30-50-year-old aging lazy quasi-alcoholics—a reason to start working on their health again.

And there’s no better way to get someone to do exercises they couldn’t be half damned to before than an incentive. Refer to point #2 above about linking a pleasurable task to boring stuff.

In this case, it’s a little bit of money that ended up going a long way.

We now have 10 members and will probably continue growing a bit. People have even gone into offshoot bets like doing 100 pushups in a row by the end of 2023, a month with 0 cigarettes (I’m in that now—I miss them), and a dry booze-free month.

I have a strong feeling we’ll continue this little exercise group, it’s fun, we can riff on each other, and everyone collectively feels a little bit better physically every week that goes by.

And who knows, maybe it’ll turn us all into Spartans.

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Written by a J.J. Pryor who’s off to the gym before it costs him money!

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