<h1 style="text-align: center;">Dating, Fitness, and a Sense of Discipline</h1>
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<p>I’ve talked before about dating <a href="https://blog.loveawake.com/2021/05/31/how-to-approach-women-at-the-gym/">women who go to the gym</a> almost obsessively and how though I appreciated their efforts, it gave me some sort of complex. For a long time, I worked out from the comforts of my home, but I only did the type of exercises I thought everyone did. They were the typical push-ups and sit-ups, nothing more, nothing less. As it turned out, those workouts were effective, and I did start to see some results, but that was almost four years ago, and I only kept it up for probably eight months. Then, when I was in a relationship with a gym rat, I joined the gym too, only to stop going two months after. Once the gym sessions stopped, working out from home altogether stopped, and for about two years, I let myself go. But this year, since October, as anyone who reads my process updates knows, I’ve been on a new health and fitness kick. I’m eating differently, exercising six days a week, and it’s made a huge impact on not only the way I feel physically, but it’s also affected my thinking about a lot of other things, including the kind of women I would like to date.</p>
<h2>Changing Perspectives through Fitness</h2>
<p>Sometime within the last week, a reader wrote to me and asked if I would ever <a href="https://www.loveawake.com/free-online-dating/France-dating-service.html?gender=female">consider dating a woman</a> who was pretty in the face, had all the assets of a woman men love to grab onto, but could also stand to lose 50 pounds. I re-read the question to make sure I read it correctly. Fifty pounds? As in, 5? 0? As in the number after 49? There was a time when I would have said yes if only because who knows how she’s wearing those 50 pounds. I mean, it could look good on her. I know the phrase “stand to lose 50 pounds” doesn’t sound appealing, but I don’t know how those pounds are being fleshed throughout her body, so I would have considered, blindly, saying sure I would date such a woman. I know this much, I certainly would have never flat-out said I wouldn’t date a woman 50 pounds overweight.</p>
<h2>Defining Personal Standards</h2>
<p>Now I feel differently and I attribute a lot of that to all the exercise and dieting I have gotten into. I still say any woman who can stand to lose 50 pounds can still look good with the 50 pounds she has. <a href="https://www.loveawake.com/free-online-dating/United-Kingdom-dating-service.html?page=58">I’ve dated thick women in the past</a>, women I know other men might write off as too thick. It’s not been a problem for me because 1) I’m a face man, so if a woman has a pretty face, I’m in and 2) if the woman carried her weight with confidence, I was definitely all in. As a matter of fact, some of these women didn’t go to the gym which made me even more comfortable, because hey, I didn’t go to the gym either. Where I have an issue now with dating a woman who can stand to lose 50 pounds now is in her willingness to do so. In other words, if a woman knows she can stand to lose 50 pounds but isn’t focused about doing so, I can’t date her. I can’t date women who continuously crash diet. I can’t date women who say they need to get back into the gym but constantly don’t go to the gym. I knew I needed to workout and get back on my exercise kick for a long time, but I certainly never spoke on it until I started doing it. For additional perspective on health commitment in relationships, read <a href="https://blog.loveawake.com/2025/05/23/what-does-a-healthy-lifestyle-look-like-for-todays-modern-couples/" target="_blank">what does a healthy lifestyle look like for today's modern couples</a>.</p>
<h2>Support and Consistency</h2>
<p>Ever since I’ve changed up my eating and adopted an exercise regimen, I realize one of the things that’s necessary in maintaining consistency is having people around me who support my efforts full stop. What does support mean exactly? Well, it means things like when we go out to eat and I elect to have a side salad instead of french fries, I don’t get judged. It means when I say I can’t spend the night because I need to get up in the morning to do my morning workout, I don’t get sneered at. It means, if I say I’m not trying to drink alcohol, I don’t get written off as someone who is boring and doesn’t want to loosen up. It means, not telling me how it’s okay to break my diet a little bit because what it’s really about is “moderation”. It means, if she says she is doing something similar, she sticks with it. The diet thing for me has been especially tricky. On my own, it’s hard for me to cut out all the breads, the pastas, the sugar, and all the other great things I like to eat. Trust me, I’ve now been eating raw broccoli and hummus long enough to know, it does not taste better than some Utz Barbecue potato chips. So if I’m already having a hard enough time staying away from the unhealthy snacks, why would I want a girl who contributes to the difficulty by loosening up the rules she gave herself? For more reading on relationship lifestyle balance, see <a href="https://blog.loveawake.com/2019/06/10/how-to-date-a-sporty-girl/" target="_blank">how to date a sporty girl</a>.</p>
<h2>Discipline and Follow-Through</h2>
<p>What it all comes down to is having the discipline to accomplish whatever goals we have made for ourselves. Now with my dieting and exercising, I don’t have any specific goals in mind, and there wasn’t any life changing event that made me want to change things up. I simply woke up one morning, looked in the mirror, didn’t like what I saw, and decided to do something about it. As I tell everyone, this wasn’t some New Year’s resolution, when I started changing everything up, 2011 was still a couple months away, and my birthday passed a couple months before I started. Now that I’m on it, I don’t want to stop it, and so we’re all clear, I’m definitely not searching for someone who is on the same kick I am. I’m still working out from home, but with the help of my trainer (shout out to Brandon Carter), I now have an effective regimen, rendering a gym meaningless. Therefore, it doesn’t mean I’m over at some 24hr Fitness looking for women who are hitting the treadmills. I could honestly care less if a woman I date goes to the gym or works out or diets. As a matter of fact, women who do diet annoy me, but that’s probably another post for another time. For more insights into maintaining mutual goals and respect in dating, read <a href="https://blog.loveawake.com/2024/12/11/how-to-build-a-lasting-relationship-beyond-ideal-proposals/" target="_blank">how to build a lasting relationship beyond ideal proposals</a>.</p>
<p>But if <a href="https://www.loveawake.com/free-online-dating/Spain-dating-service.html?gender=female&page=161">I date a woman</a> who says she does any one of these things, what I’m looking for is not the physical results of her efforts, but her ability to focus on doing the things she says she does. So if a woman tells me she can stand to lose 50 pounds — hell, if she tells me she can stand to lose five pounds — I fully expect her to do whatever she needs to do to get it done. Even if she looks good with the weight that she has, what never looks good is a lack of follow through.</p>
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