My Gym has opened a cafe, and it is making the whole place smell of chips and other deep fried goods.

[ThisMustBeMyDream]

Would you complain? My local council gym has opened a cafe inside. There is just a set of doors in between the cafe and the gym. They have opened the cafe in the foyer for the centre, and the gym is immediately off that space.
I've been to the gym this evening and spent 2 hours with deep fried goods smell in the air. As someone who has lost a huge amount of weight, and has to work very hard to keep it off - it has really upset me that they haven't considered the effect on members. I have to work every day to keep this weight off, and I did not expect the gym to become even harder to manage!
What would you do? I can't look for a new gym currently.

You have done well to loose the weight and keep it off. If you used to be the type of person to eat fast food regularly then you are going to come across temptations like this all the time im afraid. Tell yourself you no longer eat that way and think about the delicious healthy meal you will make yourself when you get home. You soon wont give it a second thought

You've done amazingly. But I guess some people exercising at the gym fancy a bit of carb loading. We always joked that my brother's training runs would somehow finish up at the house of any friend that would feed him bacon butties - his other half is vegan.

No issue with a cafe. I can walk past. But completing a 2 hour gym session with the smell of deep fried foods when the council say they are "inspiring healthy lifestyles" seems to clash with their aim, surely? They didn't consider the smell travelling in to the gym?

My favourite machine at the gym was the vending machine!

I think it is fair enough to complain about a smelly gym, but not from the point of view of the temptations it might generate for people who are losing weight or trying to eat healthily. Just because it is a smelly gym.

If lots of others complain, they might do something about it. If it is just you (or just a very few people) that complain, then I think it would be reasonable of them not to take any action.

My gym annoys me because its bar area keeps pushing loads of 'health washed' junk UPFs. Protein bars and the like. Basically sweeties for people who like their sweeties to come with misleading health claims

I once walked into my gym changing rooms and a woman was eating an actual bag of chips in there 😂

I'm surprised that others are not advocating you'd complain. I would. If this is a council gym, it's there to support healthy lifestyles, that will be their remit and personally I wouldn't be tempted by the fatty frying smells but they would make me feel sick.

I'd complain to the gym but also copy in your local councillor. It varies by area whether this is a county or borough issue (unless you have a city or unitary authority) so either google it or copy in both your borough and county councillor.

Find them here: Find your local councillors - GOV.UK

Make sure it's obvious to the gym that you're copying them in. They may voluntarily act anyway if they know you're going to create a stink (pun intended). I think it's completely fair to suggest that they don't include frying as part of their cooking methods for something they are providing as a service to support the health of constituents. Otherwise what they're doing is just maximising profit while not truly providing the service they're paid for.

The need to fit an extractor. That would make me feel ill.

This is one of my bugbears!
I hear you OP.
All the leisure / sports centres and gyms near us have a cafe selling unhealthy items plus vending machines packed with chocolate, crisps and sugary drinks. Can people not see the conflict here? It's the same in hospitals. The food and drink on offer makes people ill / unhealthy yet they are freely available in establishments whose sole purpose is to make people better 🙈

I think it’d be reasonable to complain about the smell.

The cafe at my gym does bacon sandwiches and always has a large range of cakes, but there’s no smells spreading from the cafe to the gym area so it’s easy enough to ignore it.

Yeah has always been thus. Sadly.

Problem is a lot of shelf stable or long life foods are pretty unhealthy and hospitals are boring. Cafes there want to prioritise low waste and patients often eat crap out of boredom. That's before you get onto the hospital provided food.

It's bonkers, it doesn't help recovery, but unless we want to pay more tax, it won't change.

But back to the op's point. I think oily, fatty, frying smells is a step above all that crap. That's completely crazy and I can see how it's more disruptive than a vending machine.

I would write and complain, they might not do anything but if people don’t complain it’s unlikely to change.

They should be enabling healthy eating and not stinking out the gym

In an ideal world the cafe would sell only healthy foods, but councils are cash-strapped and budgets for operating council-run gyms and leisure centres are on a shoestring as it is: they generally lease things like cafe space to outside contractors, which helps subsidise, and don’t have the luxury of being picky about who they have to operate there or what menu they serve. I wouldn’t want to exercise to the smell of fried food, either, but I’d probably prefer it to not having gym facilities at all if the council gym was my only option.

Yeah... but there's "only healthy foods" and there's "we've got the chip pan on all day". Surely there's a happy medium?

I agree it’s odd when they are meant to promote healthy eating! I’d email them and say they perhaps need some healthier options if it was my gym.
We’re not gym members but when I go to my friends gym on the occasional guest pass - the restaurant there is really healthy certainly no deep fat fryers on the go there, it’s. David Lloyd one for reference.
This sounds a big weird I’ve just mentioned it to my partner and he agreed it’s not just exercise -
they’re there to promote a healthy lifestyle.

I would complain!

Really annoying. I would definitely complain! There's plenty of other foods that they could offer. It's actually annoying how hard it can be to get anything other than chips sometimes.

Why on earth would they open a cafe like that in a gym, the least they could do would be to offer healthy food.

My Slimming World group is held in a church, they have also opened a cafe, our room has a serving hatch between the kitchen and where we all sit. The smells! Cheese on toast smells delicious and the wonderful cakes sitting under their glass domes. There is a bonus in that they do make our drinks and wash up our tea/coffee mugs.

You could speak to the gym about the extraction and ventilation system in place as the cafe should not be impacting on the air quality in the gym.

I would be less concerned with the food being sold and served but would definitely not want to exercise in a poorly ventilated space.

You could also contact your local council to clarify their commercial kitchen policy for ventilation and extraction.

A left of field thought but I've not been to a gym (apart from desperation when I'm in a hotel) for years.

They're expensive, you often end up having to wait to use what you want.

What I do instead is running (if you've not tried running the couch to 5K programme really does work, you can download podcasts for it, there's a free one on BBC Sounds) and also I lift weights at home using FitnessBlender work outs (about 600 of them are free).

Fitness Blender

When trying to lose weight it is important to do what you can to manage your environment away from temptation and perhaps this is time you looked at doing something different? Benefits are that even if you buy some weights they'll pay back in no time. You'll save money overall.

Personally I think its a terrible idea having a cafe selling junk fried food at a gym. Healthy eating and exercise goes hand in hand. The cafe at my gym only sells delicious healthy options. Apart from which the smell of fried food in a confined area is disgusting. Not understanding the comments thinking its acceptable, I think its weird and inconceivable and would definitely be questioning the gym about this. Do they sell any healthy options?