500 Workouts: From Finding the Gym Boring to Missing It

In early 2024, I read the book Outlive, and because of it and a few health podcasts, I started to take more care of my health (even creating some pillars), especially when it comes to muscle.

What made the most impact on me was learning that the more muscle mass we have when we are getting old, the lower the risk of death, and that we lose muscle strength every year starting in our 40s and 50s. So if we want to be healthy in our later years, we need to build more muscle strength now, so that even with the decline, we will be better off than without it. As the book explains, if you want to hike 5 km when you are 80 years old, you should be able to hike more than 20 km when you are 35.

So I started going to the gym, even though I didn’t really enjoy it, especially because I work in an office, sitting the whole day. I found it boring to do the same movements for an hour every day.

Almost three years later, I got to 500 workouts. Fitbod, the app I use, reminded me of it this week. According to the app, only 14% of its users have reached this milestone.

Besides the workouts, the app also tracks other milestones. In total, I have lifted more than 6 million pounds and burned more than 170,000 calories in the gym.

From not enjoying it to 500 workouts, a lot has changed. Now I enjoy it, and I even miss it if I don’t go.

Initially, my wife was the one going to the gym more (she had been encouraging me to try it for years), and now some weeks I go even more than she does.

I started with three days a week, then four, and right now, I go five times a week, from Monday to Friday, in the morning. It is good that when I come back from the gym, I am already fully awake and energized to start the day, while other people are only waking up. Going every weekday also makes it easier, as there is no decision to make: it is simply part of my routine.

In Fitbod, I follow a split of push, pull, legs, upper body and lower body days, so each weekday works a different part of the body.

There is also the psychological effect of doing something hard at the beginning of the day, as you have already accomplished something that day. If you don’t feel productive for the rest of the day, at least you already did something. I am an advocate for the gym now.

To support the workouts, I aim for 2 g of protein per kg of body weight every day, and I use whey protein to reach it, as I explained in my 2025 health review.

One thing is that I am not as strong as I expected to be after 500 workouts, but I am definitely stronger and more defined than before. As I wrote in my pillars, my goal was never to be a bodybuilder, but to build general strength and tone the muscles. In Fitbod, my goal is “Get Lean” and not hypertrophy, as I prefer to be lean and strong rather than big. I just don’t get that lean, because that also requires controlling calories, which is harder for me, even when I try. I can feel some muscles that I didn’t even know existed, and I can see that my posture is a lot better today than it was before. I was starting to have a little back pain, but I don’t have it anymore.

Before April, I was using the gym in our building, and after that I moved to a commercial gym. My strength in the app dropped further after the move, but my guess is that the machines and weights in the commercial gym are more accurate, so the numbers are more precise now. I also changed the exercise variability to “More Variable”, which makes tracking harder for the app, but I don’t like to repeat the same exercises too much, and that matters more to me than the measurement.

My current plan in the app is five workouts per week, 1 hour and 30 minutes each.

I am happy with the results for now. Even though I am not that strong, it is a good balance, because we have traveled a few times, and when we return, I have to lower the weights.

Now I am looking forward to seeing the difference when I hit 1,000 workouts. Let’s keep it up!

Cheers.