Starting a new path in life is really, really hard.

This is the story of someone looking to start getting healthier and live longer, as they told it to me. “Jim” is a pseudonym, and he doesn’t like the internet, or writing, or even talking about himself. But this is his story, through his eyes. Missed the first one? Start here.

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OK, so last time I said I’d break down what we’re paying at Locomotion. My wife is really good at budgeting and numbers.

My friends were kinda giving me a hard time about the monthly rates last Saturday, but I had a feeling we were actually a bit ahead. So here are the numbers. But first, my wife is going to change to a ‘wellness membership’ until tax season is over. She’s a stress eater (we both are) and her schedule is rough until April, so she’s going add nutrition coaching to her regular gym membership. If you’ve ever seen her in the middle of March, it’s like she’s a totally different person. I think Wellness is maybe $50 bucks more per month; if that helps her stay in this happy mood until the tax deadline, it’s worth it a hundred times over. God, I sound like one of those Reader’s Digest articles.

So here’s the breakdown:

Me: $149 per month (I go to group CrossFit classes now.)

Her: $230 per month starting next month (The Wellness Membership. Basically CrossFit and a nutrition accountability plan.)

That’s the up-front. Sounds high compared to the $19 deal that I started with, right? BUT she calculated the costs we’re actually saving.

First, she’s not buying those shakes anymore. That’s $99 per month right there. I don’t think they were working anymore anyway.

Second, I can’t believe the CRAP I used to spend money on. I said that I was going for a donut on Saturdays with the boys, but really it was a donut almost every day. I’d go through Glazed and grab a sour cream glazed with my coffee in the morning. So that’s over $40 per month. I don’t want to sound like a food nazi, but eating that sugar in the morning just made me feel like crap in the afternoon. I didn’t realize it until now. So usually I’d get a muffin or something off the tray in the front office for energy. Now I don’t even want to.

We also cut out the “junk budget”–all the loose change in our pockets got put in a drawer at the end of the day, and every week we’d spend it on chips and stuff. I’m still having some chips on Saturday nights, but we don’t have a cupboard full of cookies and stuff anymore. It’s just not in the house. If the kids want something, I tell them to go out and get it. So we figured out that’s another 20 bucks per week ($80 per month.) My membership’s almost paid for already. Imagine if we smoked!

We were also getting pizza at least once every week until now, and we’d get takeout almost every night during tax season. This is the first time we added all that up. It’s over $150 per month, and we definitely don’t miss that stuff now. You don’t really know that you don’t feel good until you DO feel good; now we don’t want to feel like garbage anymore. That’s seriously how I feel after eating pizza. I handle gluten just fine and stuff, but all the carbs made me want to sleep.

The big expense, really, is coming from buying clothes and going on dates. Someone else can tell my wife that stuff’s too expensive, because there’s no way I’m going to.