Life Cafe

Every now and again, I will finish an especially grueling workout, and in addition to feeling both accomplished and thinner, I’m also hungry enough to eat my iPod. Enter Life Café.
When I signed up with Lifetime Fitness, I made sure to set up a tab to ensure unfettered access to both the café and the salon, in the case of a dietary or manicuring emergency. Thankfully this is a tab that is taken care of for me, so I’ve shown remarkable restraint and judgment in its use. Clearly, that concept is new territory for me.
As far as food goes, my go-​to meal is the turkey avocado that comes warm on ciabatta bread (sides include a small salad with balsamic dressing, and a cup of fruit). There’s a wide variety of sport drinks, but I just stick to Evian. Also, when I forget to bring my water from home (which happens a lot), I can just pop in here and get what I need.
Life Café lists relevant nutrition facts beneath all of its offerings, and I wouldn’t expect anything less from a café located inside a gym. And while the totals on carbs and fats may seem high to me, it’s usually easily integrated if I have burned enough calories during the previous workout. It’s supposed to promote LifeCafe’s Nutrition Philosophy: «Avoid ‘dieting’ (Translation: Eat, damn it); Whole, natural foods (versus fat and sugar dipped in chemicals); Proper hydration (yeah, but where’s the Voss in the pretty glass bottles?); Food as fuel (so I will be strong enough to drink and hold court later); Mindful/​sensible eating (as opposed to mindless, unaware consumption of crap); Body awareness (Believe me, I’m body aware… of mine AND yours); and Personal responsibility» (Well…I do take the extra couple seconds to recycle my water bottles and spoons, does that count?).
Prices are reasonable, and there are several specials for $ 3, $ 4 or $ 5 depending on the meal. Of course there’s a whole list of different smoothies or parfaits to choose from as well. BE CAREFUL, though. Not all menu items are automatically «healthy»; at an afternoon tasting, the Lifetime woman wanted to make sure I was aware that the BBQ chicken pizza wasn’t low-​fat by any means. Obviously, I already knew this, but you’d be amazed how many people probably don’t. That’s why they have clipboards with sign up sheets for nutrition classes available at these things.
In addition to made-​to-​order food, there is a whole wall of energy bars, protein powders, and even gluten-​free snacks. I’m not sure how prices compare to a store like GNC, but I’ll occasionally grab something if I forgot to pack my own Kashi bar.
The aroma of warm bread is pervasive in the lobby, and is perfect for enticing people to stop in. I suspect they do it on purpose, because even when no one is in there, I smell that delicious bread. I swear they are probably required to press a piece of bread every hour just to keep the aroma around; maybe I should ask my friend who works there the next time I see her.
The moral of the story? If you’re a member of Lifetime Fitness and haven’t tried LifeCafe, give it a whirl. I’m sure you’ll find something you’ll like.
Just don’t check in enough to take away my Dukedom.
4 Stars.

When I joined Lifetime Fitness, I really didn’t expect to eat at their in-​house café much, if at all. But it’s surprisingly good. Tasty, healthy food at decent prices.
I’d rate the place higher, but on a number of occasions, service has been slow for no discernible reason, and several of their employees seem to have broken give-​a-​damns.
But, still a good choice for a post workout meal.