A new approach to weight loss: "Get in shape or we will shame you"

By NATALIA HAWK

If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the jungle regions of Mexico where there’s no iPhone reception.

You see, my worst nightmares have all come together and manifested in the form of a horrible, horrible app.

The app is called “Gym Shamer”. Basically, if you took an evil mother-in-law, a stubbed toe, a really cheap glass of wine and every other miserable experience in the world, and put them all together, you would get this app.

This douchebag of an app takes note of those optimistic gym goals you made at the beginning of the year when you were probably still drunk off champagne and sunshine. If you tell it that you want to go to the gym six times a week, it will take note. It then TRACKS YOUR GYM VISITS via Foursquare check-ins to make sure that you actually stick with your fitness goal. Your ridiculous and unattainable fitness goal (“Of COURSE I’ll take up yogalates, never miss a spin class and train for a triathon by March!”).

But wait, because it gets worse. If you slack off, Gym Shamer sends a message to ALL YOUR FACEBOOK AND TWITTER FRIENDS to tell them that you haven’t been going to the gym.  All of them. Including your mum, your work colleagues, and the ex-boyfriend you’ve been meaning to delete for six months.

Gym Shamer doesn’t care about period pain. It doesn’t care if you had to work late. It doesn’t care that your kid is sick. It doesn’t care that your best friend has unexpectedly come to town so you need to have cocktails tonight instead of going to spin class.

It only cares about the silly gym – and it will thrive on sending that mean tweet/Facebook update.

Here’s an example:

It physically pains me to look at that tweet. Maybe it’s the negative connotations involved in the word “fail”. It should really say something like, “I tried really hard to go to the gym 3 times this week but truly awful and unforeseeable circumstances got in the way, so I didn’t.”

Or maybe I find it hard to read because it hits so close to home. Honestly, the things I’ve done to avoid the gym…

The Gym Shamer could really be the best thing to kick myself into gear. Inner guilt-tripping can only go so far – but I would go VERY far out of my way to make sure that my social networks didn’t know about my lazy, money-wasting ways.

So. Maybe it’ll get downloaded after all.

But for the moment, I’m still searching for less-humiliating modes of motivation.

Would you try the Gym Shamer app? How do you motivate yourself to go to the gym?

Editor’s note: This is not a sponsored post but if you would like to try the app, you can sign up at gymshamer.com with a Foursquare account – and then use the Foursquare mobile app to check into the gym. We recommend you do not do this. Stay in this happy world of denial with Nat.