A lot of people on here are shitting on you. Also a lot of people here are not physically in shape and in their 30s or 40s. I’m just going to assume that.

A lot of people here also assume you’re an alcoholic and spend hundreds of dollars a month on alcohol. You probably don’t.

If you were an alcoholic, gym costs, supps, whatever will be cheaper than alcohol. If you’re a social drinker and drink a six pack or two a week, getting swole will be more expensive.

Just by quitting alcohol, many people will be much much healthier even if they subsist on diet coke. But OP wants to be fit AND Healthy, which a lot of people also want to be, and they are shocked at how much money obtaining and maintaining fitness is.

When you lose weight - you’re going to want to buy gym clothes that don’t make you look like a sack of potatoes. That costs money. Or if you’re real thrifty go and wear your old gym clothes from college. Unfortunately, the gym has become like high school, you can try not to wear nice gym clothes, and your mileage will vary.

Supplements are absolutely essential. If you want to workout, go to work, have a social life, have family time, and have enough energy for all of those things, a once a day multivitamin is not going to cut it. Supplements cost money. For example — Amino acids that are required for muscle maintenance while your aging, unfortunately, you will not get that with the shitty diet you had. This costs money to supplement.

If OP is a male, and tall, he needs to keep up his calorie intake/macros in proportion to his lifting or he will just injure himself. Especially if he is lifting heavy. If not, he will workout and up looking like a serial marathon runner. I don’t think this is what he wants. This also costs money.

Perhaps people on here just want you to walk on the treadmill or ride a bike 20 minutes a day and be the skinny-fat male equivalent of Pam from the office and just say you’re healthy and fit, but male health requires a certain muscle mass for continued testosterone production which is absolutely and undeniably essential for male mental and physical health — and this gets harder and harder to maintain as you get older without proper nutrition/diet/exercise — and all of this requires money.

OP Please don’t let people get you down, you were trying to do a good thing, but people in general are fitness-averse and see it as an unnecessary lifestyle because honestly, they’ve never had it, so they don’t know any better.