“how to become a gym girl” is a little series i’m putting together for those of you who want to start going to the gym but feel stuck before you even begin. if that’s you, i hope this makes taking that first step feel a little easier ♡
welcome back to our how to become a gym girl series.
i wrote almost all of today’s post at the gym, in the middle of my quad workout. i rarely touch my phone when i train, but today i was so bored that i opened my notes app and started typing whatever was going through my head. i do this all the time. i even have a folder called “brain dump” for moments like this 😄
i just wanted to clear my head for a few minutes, but somehow, i ended up thinking about the next posts i wanted to write. and that’s when i realized it’s been a while since the last edition of this series. so between sets, while i rested and watched what was happening around me, a few ideas started to come together. they ended up becoming the post you’re reading right now.
to be honest, i didn’t really know what to write about until a conversation caught my attention.
a couple of women near me were talking about how much they disliked working out. one thing led to another, and the conversation got to a point that hit very close to home. one of them said (maybe not in these exact words, but something along these lines):
— “i’ve never been an athletic person. i've always been so weak.”
if you’ve been reading me for a while, you probably know this part of my story. i spent a big part of my life believing i wasn’t an athletic person. i hated sports, i thought i had no talent for them, and i simply accepted it as part of who i was.
as if some people were just born “sporty” and others weren’t.
that’s when i started thinking about how we build stories about ourselves and, after a while, start treating them as facts.
“i’m not an athletic person.”
“i hate the gym.”
“i’ve never been good at sports.”
“i have no discipline.”
“i just can’t enjoy exercise.”
sometimes these sentences are only a description of how we feel in that moment. but when we repeat the same story for years, it becomes part of our identity. and without even noticing, we start making decisions based on it.
i know because i did exactly that.
💌
never not hungry is a reader-supported publication.
subscribe for free to get weekly essays on fitness, nutrition, and wellness culture. if you want to take things a step further, becoming a ✨ paid reader ✨ gives you access to all the guides, tools, and resources designed to help you get stronger with more confidence and less guesswork.
the identity you’ve built for yourself
if you’ve read atomic habits by james clear, you might remember the idea of identity-based habits. put very simply, changing a habit shouldn’t only be about what you want to achieve. there’s also a question behind it: who is the person who does these things?
instead of just thinking “i want to read more,” you start thinking “i’m someone who reads.” instead of “i need to go to the gym three times a week,” you start building the identity of someone who trains.
that might sound like a small difference, but it changes a lot about the way you see your own actions. if you believe you’re a sedentary person trying to start working out, every trip to the gym can feel like a chore that takes effort and willpower. but if you start seeing yourself as someone who trains, going to the gym stops being something you’re trying to do and becomes something you just do.
it becomes part of who you are.
and this is where another idea comes in. it wasn’t created to talk about habits, but i find it surprisingly relevant here: personal lore.
so… what's personal lore?
if you spend any time online, you’ve probably seen someone talk about their lore.
originally, lore refers to the history and the world behind a character, a video game, a movie or a book. it’s all the background details, events and little stories that explain how a character got to where they are. online, people borrowed the word to talk about the personal stories that make up their own lives.
that time you did something completely random at 19. the weird job you once had. the phase when you were obsessed with something. a story almost nobody knows, but that’s somehow part of who you are.
it’s your unofficial biography. the personal mythology you carry around about yourself.
i kept turning these two ideas over in my head. james clear's point is that the habits you repeat build the person you believe you are. personal lore says that the stories you repeat about yourself slowly become your own history. once i put them side by side, i started wondering whether the story we tell about ourselves could be rewritten.
rewriting your personal lore
for many years, my personal lore said i wasn’t an athletic person. that was the story.
i didn’t play sports, i wasn’t good at PE, and i was sedentary for most of my life. i had no strength, no coordination, no “talent.” and since that story had been repeated so many times, i never stopped to question it.
until i started lifting.
when i decided to take lifting seriously, i had some very concrete goals. i wanted to change the way my body looked, improve my health, find out if i could do things that seemed really hard for me and, most of all, get stronger.
but looking back, i think one of the most important things that happened was something else. slowly, i started collecting evidence that the story i told about myself wasn’t necessarily true. movements that had seemed impossible became part of my routine. the weights on the bar kept going up. after a few years, i was lifting things i couldn’t even imagine getting off the floor when i started.
i found out i could actually enjoy training.
and little by little, the story changed. i didn’t wake up one day and decide, “from now on, i’m an athletic person.” but somehow, my actions started to contradict the old story i had about myself. i think that distinction is important.
you don’t need to convince yourself that you’re already the person you want to be. you can start by giving yourself small pieces of proof.
you’re not stuck with the old version of you
i used to believe i didn’t like sports. it took me years to look at that belief properly, and when i did, it didn’t hold up very well. maybe i’d just never found an activity i enjoyed. i thought i was weak, but i’d never trained, so i had no way of knowing. i thought i had no discipline, when in reality i’d never built a routine that made sense for my life.
questioning these beliefs doesn’t mean every struggle is a mindset problem, or that changing the way you think is enough to change your life. that would be way too simplistic. sometimes you really won’t like an activity, and that’s fine. the gym doesn’t have to be for everyone. but there’s a huge difference between saying “i tried lifting and didn’t like it” and “i’m not someone who works out.”
the first one is a preference, the second one is an identity. and identities can change.
think of your identity as a story that’s being written all the time. you don’t have to erase everything that came before. your old story still exists, it’s part of you. but it doesn’t have to decide what happens in the next chapters.
if you’ve spent the last ten years saying you hate exercise, it doesn’t make much sense to try to become, overnight, the person who spends two hours at the gym every day and loves it. start smaller.
maybe you can start with a walk after lunch, two lifting sessions a week, or that pilates class you keep meaning to try. maybe it’s finally learning how to run, or simply deciding to stop treating movement as a punishment.
each of these choices adds a small line to your story. and after a while, you look back and realize your lore has changed.
how to start rewriting your lore
before you think about goals, weights, measurements or how many days a week you should train, i want to suggest an exercise. grab a piece of paper or open your notes app and write down your answers to these four questions.
01. what’s the story i tell about myself?
start with the sentences you repeat without even noticing.
“i’m not athletic.”
“i’m terrible at sports.”
“i have no discipline.”
“i don’t like the gym.”
“i’m so weak.”
don’t try to fix these sentences yet. just get everything down on paper.
02. where did this story come from?
think about the experiences that helped shape this idea of yourself.
was it school?
a bad experience with sports?
comments from other people?
comparing yourself to someone else?
years of not moving much?
or did you simply never find an activity you liked?
this isn’t about finding someone to blame. it’s only about understanding where the story came from.
03. what do you want to be part of your lore from now on?
now imagine you’re writing the next version of your story. don’t think about the body you want to have. think about the person you want to be.
“i’m someone who takes care of my health.”
“i’m a woman who gets stronger over time.”
“i’m someone who enjoys moving my body.”
“i’m someone who doesn’t give up just because something is hard at first.”
“i’m a woman who feeds my body instead of being scared of food.”
choose the affirmations that really make sense to you, not what looks good on social media.
04. what actions would back up this new story?
this is the most important part, because writing “i’m someone who trains” in your notes app is fun, but it won’t do the work for you.
if you want to be a gym girl, here are some things that could be part of your new lore:
finding a gym where you actually feel comfortable
choosing a training program you can realistically stick to
starting with two or three sessions a week instead of trying to train every day
learning the basic movements and accepting that you’ll feel a little clumsy at first
writing down your weights and reps so you can see your progress
adding reps or weight little by little
eating enough to fuel your training, carbs included
prioritizing protein and meals that actually keep you full
sleeping and resting instead of believing more training is always better
trying different kinds of movement until you find a few you really enjoy
showing up even in the weeks when your motivation is nowhere to be found
none of this is particularly revolutionary, and that’s exactly the point. you don’t need a movie-worthy transformation to change the way you see yourself. you need enough experiences to show your brain that the old version of the story isn’t the only one possible anymore.
every workout is another line in your story
these days, when i think about the woman i was before i started training, it sometimes feels like i’m talking about someone else. the woman who believed she had no talent for sports is still part of my story but she’s no longer the only version of me that exists. and that's what i like most about the idea of personal lore. instead of trying to become a completely different person overnight, you just need to make room for other versions of yourself to exist, too.
maybe you’re not “an athletic person” yet. that’s okay. going to the gym twice this week already counts. so does doing your first push-up, adding 2 kg to your squat, taking a 20-minute walk when you’d normally have spent that time on the couch, and eating a plate of pasta before training without feeling like you have to make up for it later.
all of that is a new little detail in your lore. they’re small stories that, once they start to pile up, slowly change the way you see yourself. and one day, you realize that “i’m not someone who works out” just doesn’t make sense anymore.
because you do work out now. you’ve collected the evidence and you’ve written a different story.
that’s one of the best parts of starting something new: finding out that you never really knew who you could become.
thanks for reading,
—glicia ⋆˚✿˖
P.S. if you think this was useful, tap the ❤️, drop a comment, and share it with someone who needs to hear it.
read the other posts in this series
about the writer
i’m glicia, a personal trainer and nutrition student based in paris. i’m the person behind never not hungry, a newsletter about getting stronger, eating actual food (yes, with carbs!), and making fitness a little less complicated. when i’m not writing, i’m designing workout programs, trying overpriced cafés, reading romantasy, or lifting heavy things. welcome to my little corner of the internet. i hope you’ll stay.
I have also went through this process. From not working out at all to being a gym girl. "learning the basic movements and accepting that you’ll feel a little clumsy at first" - this was the most helpful step for me personally. I joined a CrossFit box where in very small groups I was able to learn basic movements. Now I feel very knowledgable but also still very comfortable with being clumpsy if I try something new :)