The Times Style section wonderfully fulfills its reason for existence today—to provide the world with Purposefully Enraging Pseudotrend Stories. While the average American watches the pounds melt off their frame naturally while supping on Kool-Aid and roadkill soup, rich, recently laid-off finance workers have a more pressing worry: How will the collapse of the nation's economy affect my personal training schedule? Some are sucking it up and pressing on, regardless of the hardships:

Ms. Sturtevant, [an Oppenheimer & Co. investment director and] a mother of four, is training for her fourth marathon. With brokerage clients needing more hand-holding, she said, she stints on sleep rather than skip her 5 a.m. daily boot camp and 20-mile weekend runs.

Other wealthies are not so fortunate; their body fat percentages may be suffering in this downturn.

Her trainer, Chris Hall, chides Ms. David to make time and, when she does, to tune out her BlackBerry, she reported. “But I say, ‘You don’t understand — there’s 27,000 reasons I have to pay attention,’ ” referring to her accounts.

To help the selfless brokers, rich-person gyms are cutting fees and reaching out to those wealthy individuals in need. Still, some condo-dwellers are forced to suffer the ultimate indignity:

Since leaving a Midtown law firm in June to work at a nonprofit in Harlem, she’s been using her apartment building’s spartan fitness room. “When there are only three treadmills, it can get crowded pretty quickly,” she said. “I’m lucky if I get in 20 minutes instead of the hour I used to do,” Ms. Shemin Feingold said. “My pants are getting tight. I’m going to have to figure out a new routine, because I can’t afford a new wardrobe.”

Cheer up, plutocrats. There's one workout that can be done with an old truck axle and two sandbags: