When I find myself daydreaming, there’s one particular scenario that plays out in my head. It usually starts with me leaving a fitness class – reformer pilates to be specific – feeling slightly sweaty but refreshed and accomplished for contorting my body in positions I didn’t think I could get into at 7.30am. Before I leave the snazzy studio, I mosey on over to the refreshments counter to grab a protein smoothie or juice (which probably costs around £6 plus an extra £2.50 for a dollop of almond butter). Then I get on with the rest of my morning before returning to another class in a day or two to do it all again. I’m a regular. I’m that girl.

I know this isn’t some wild, far-fetched dream. After all, the number of pilates studios and boutique gyms opening up in London seems to be at an all-time high. Australian fitness franchise Strong Pilates (a pilates, cardio and strength hybrid) just launched its flagship location in Islington, while Studio Pilates International is expected to set up the first of its nine UK sites in June. Blok has just increased its pilates offering to include reformer classes.

Pilates is everywhere. But its ubiquity hasn’t made it more affordable; class prices are astronomical. And it’s when I look up the cost of classes that my dream wellness journey starts to fade, and I come crashing back down to budget gym reality.

Like many women, I’ve had a tricky relationship with fitness in the past. I’ve grown to realise that you’ve got to find activities that genuinely work for you – and that can take a lot of research and time. It’s worth investing in, though; after all the years of struggling to commit to gyms and paying through the nose for memberships I don’t use, I’ve finally found an activity I love.

I’m not alone; in a recent survey, 70% of UK fitness fans said they would rather do pilates over yoga, which helps to explain why it’s currently one of the world’s most googled fitness terms. As a budding fitness girlie, I find myself gravitating towards classes like reformer pilates and barre – spaces that feel safe and enjoyable yet challenging.

But paying £50 a week for two classes? Or forking out £300 for a block of six sessions? That’s challenging even for those of us on comfortable salaries – especially at a time when a cost of living crisis is still raging.

In December 2022, a YouGov poll found 10% of adults in the UK had either cancelled or were considering cancelling a gym or other sports or exercise membership due to the rising cost of living. Prolonged financial and political instability is affecting an area of our lives that we should be leaning on the most to get us through difficult times: our health and wellbeing.

And it doesn’t begin and end with which gym or classes you can afford. There’s the cost of travelling to the charming boutique studio you’ve fallen in love with but that isn’t close to home. Then there’s the increased food bill – those fresh vegetables and lean proteins don’t come cheap – not to mention the increasing number of supplements you now want to take after a fellow pilates classmate told you how good L-glutamine is for bloating (I’m projecting, I know).

Before you know it, you’ve spent over £100 on chic new yoga pants and crop tops so you can look and feel the part, have a pending Amazon order of vitamins you’ve barely heard of and you’re wondering whether to increase your ClassPass membership to allow for more weekly sessions. God forbid you walk past a Whole Foods Market on your way home, with its promise of better health, glowing skin and organic grub.

You can’t put a price on health – and most of us know that the fundamentals of wellbeing are inexpensive. It doesn’t cost much to stay hydrated, eat more plants (including cheaper foods such as rice, frozen veg and bananas) and sleep for seven hours. Some of us work in shifts, have children or live with other constraints on our time and energy, but generally speaking, health doesn’t need to cost a fortune. So why is ‘wellness’ marketed at such a high price?

Last year, the Global Wellness Institute published its Future Of Wellness 2022 Trends Report, which found consumers are “tired of wellness as elitist hyper-consumerism” and want more “accessible, affordable wellness”. Hear, hear.

Of course, rising costs and the fallout from Covid have had a dramatic impact on the viability of lots of smaller gyms. It’s much more expensive to run studios in 2023, let alone pay instructors a fair wage. They received minimal support over successive lockdowns and then went straight into another crisis. 

But the cost of wellness isn’t just about the price of pilates. It’s easy to convince yourself you’re upping your wellness game when it can be done with a simple flash of a credit card. Whether you’ve been lured in by the promise of the ‘perfect morning routine’ on TikTok or you’re keen to make new friends at the studio you’ve just joined, wellness and hyper-consumerism are inexorably linked in 2023. You can’t budge on Instagram right now for PTs and fitness influencers pushing their luxury wellness retreats in Bali (with prices starting at £1,500 per person, based on sharing a room with a total stranger and excluding flights, baggage and transfers).

So what can we do if we’re feeling priced out of our dream wellness journey? If it’s taken you years to start valuing your mental and physical health, the last thing you want to do is give up. And that’s where I’ve got to: I can’t afford to go back, but I can’t really afford to move forwards either. The wellness space feels like an exclusive members’ club that I’m desperately trying to break into. I’ve had a sip of the Kool-Aid at the door, and now I want my own jug of it.

It’s worth saying that as a single woman with no debts or dependents, I probably could spend the money on a block of classes if I decided to rejig some of my other spending habits. I’d have to sacrifice something to become That Pilates Girl. I don’t want to do pilates at home on YouTube – I want to be in the studio, with a teacher who can correct my form and have access to a changing room with nice hand soap. Is that really too much to ask?

Images: Getty