Objective: To compare attitudes of overweight (OW) and normal weight (NW) adults regarding health club exercise. Design: A 46-item survey (23 pairs of attitude/value statements) measured attitudes toward exercising at a health club 30 minutes, twice a week, for a month. Setting: Survey posted on surveymonkey.com. Respondents (men = 730, women = 822). Main Outcome Measures: Attitudes toward exercise, exercise intent. Analysis: "t" tests, Mann-Whitney rank sum, 2-way analysis of variance, Pearson rank correlations. Significance set at P less than 0.05. Results: More than NW, OW believe exercise improves appearance (P less than 0.001) and self image (P less than 0.03). OW feel more embarrassed and intimidated about exercising, exercising around young people, exercising around fit people, and about health club salespeople than NW (P less than 0.001). OW and NW feel the same about exercising with the opposite sex, complicated exercise equipment, exercise boredom, and intention to exercise. Age rather than weight affects exercise intent. OW Caucasians (C) have less exercise intent than OW non-C. OW women are more embarrassed about exercising than NW women and OW men. The heavier the subject's weight, the lower his or her perception of health (r = -0.53, P less than 0.001). Conclusions and Implications: Increasing the OW person's positive beliefs while decreasing negative beliefs about health club exercise will improve his or her intent to exercise at a health club. (Contains 3 tables.)