Historically I’ve been pretty good about going to the gym. After work I like to set up camp on the treadmill near the pull-up bars, put “It’s Raining Men” on my shuffle, and enjoy the ab smorgasbord before me. I never thought of myself as someone who needed any amenities—until this winter.

For the past few years I’ve belonged to the $20-a-month gym in my neighborhood. It’s bare-bones but adequate. They don’t offer towels, and I suspect that’s because towels might encourage people to use the showers, and then the showers would have to be cleaned (once I tried the water in one of the showers and nothing happened, so they’re really covering their bases on that front). Still, the gym was cheap and fine. Then everything changed. First they came for the scale. One day it was there, and then it was gone. Then they stopped turning on the giant fan—the only thing that had kept the gym, which is underground, temperate. The bouncy balls all deflated, and one by one the ellipticals busted. The gym had let itself go.

In January, I spent more time updating my Yelp review of the gym than I spent working out. That month various forces came together to turn me into a slovenly wine bag. I couldn’t get it up for my old sticky gym, but I couldn’t go home after work because I had a chatty new roommate who (a) was unemployed/omnipresent, and (b) had an unhealthy love for Kenny Chesney. Instead I got drinks with everybody in my proverbial rolodex. I drank and dined and spent, and it was a while before I took a step back. I felt doughy and I had a constant low-level hangover. I was stressed about maintaining my suddenly opulent lifestyle on my budget. I missed the ab smorgasbord.

I only became aware of fancy gyms when I moved to New York a few years ago. In Chicago some gyms cost more than others, but there was nothing like the ultra-exclusive, $500-a-month ordeals in New York. Chicago is the city that works, not the city that works out (heh heh). In New York there’s the E club, which is a gym for people so lithe and rich that you have to submit to a retina scanner to enter. The E club, Carrie Battan writes, boasts “an endless river of refrigerated eucalyptus towels. Private cabanas instead of plebeian locker rooms. Each state-of-the-art resistance band has been stowed in its proper place to make sure that your workout is clutter-free.” On average it costs members about $30,000 a year.

I didn’t have a $30,000 fitness budget. I didn’t have a fitness budget at all. However, I looked at all my purchases from December, when I went to the gym, and January, when I didn’t, and realized that I spent $200 more on alcohol alone in January. That $200 became my fitness budget. I found a fancy gym near my office where membership cost $130 a month. That’s more than I spend on groceries, but it was still dramatically cheaper than Equinox. Broken down, it's about $4 a day, which is less than some people spend on coffee. And there were so many towels.

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This is how the 1% lifts, bro.

By Carrie Battan

I'd heard people say that spending more on a gym membership guilted them into working out more often—that's not the case for me. I hate guilt. But I do appreciate luxury. The fancy gym made me feel like a prodigal child who had finally found asylum in a sexy, peaceful, lavender-scented country like Sweden. I started going to the gym every day. The locker room attendant (!) told me I could have all the towels I wanted. I only took one, but then I saw a lady take five so now I take five. On my first day I’d brought my own shampoo and soap and stuff, and was profoundly moved to see that the fancy gym provided those, too—everything at the gym, including myself, smells like lavender. This gym made working out so easy and pleasant. I had never been in a sauna before, and I quickly came to appreciate the power of a schvitz after a workout. I spent the rest of the winter stewing in the sauna, having tranquil chit-chat with my new lavender friends. The fancy gym replaced my local sausage grill as my happy place, I got fancy abs, and I actually ended up spending way less on the gym than I’d been spending on happy hour.

In summary, I will tell you what the fancy fitness manager told me when I shared some of the horrors of my old, adequate gym: “Yes it’s very nice here, would you like another towel?”

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