There is an intimacy in a town the size of Springfield, where folks are prone to run into each other at supermarkets, which can be an uncomfortable encounter when it’s your fitness instructor coming down the aisle.

“When I run into clients at the grocery store, they hide what’s in their carts,” says Jill Thiel, coowner of Fitness Together, who can recall more than one instance in which someone has placed themselves between her and whatever forbidden carbs might be lurking amid yoghurt and tofu. “It’s hilarious. I’m not a saint – I buy bad things, too.

Everything in moderation.”

It is, there seems, a fitness club to fit most everyone in Springfield, ranging from enormous clubs with swimming pools and basketball courts to small opera tions like Fitness Together, which offers one-on-one personal training in a studio – don’t call it a gym – equipped with aerobic and strength-training machines, exercise balls and weights.

“We’re a full gym, we just don’t look like a gym,” Thiel says. “We call them studios because they’re private, and they’re not open to just anyone to walk in.”

With 4,500 square feet of space, Anytime Fitness is far from the largest fitness center in Springfield. Like most, the center emphasizes personal service, it’s open around the clock and it offers members the chance to work out in more than 1,300 franchises worldwide. Like every other fitness club in the city, Anytime Fitness expects to be slammed with new business right about now, as folks with the best of intentions vow to exercise post-holiday guts away.

“January is, logically, when everybody is in the market to buy a health club membership,” Imhoff says. “The good news is, we have the capacity to handle that. Our church is built for Easter Sunday.”

Some less spacious centers put time limits on treadmills during this busy season.

“Usually, around March, it settles down a bit,” says