Rent a Personal Trainer

I know we have people in our lives that we want to help get in better shape. I know that you want to do the best you can to give them every opportunity to improve and this is a good thing. I know of one person who actually went out and bought a whole total gym for their husband. Her purpose was genuine, she wanted him to be around for a longtime and he needed to get in better shape to do that. She went as far as spending over $10,000 to get him all the equipment she thought he needed to get it done. For a while he did use it but after about 6 months, his use of the equipment became less and less. Now all that equipment has become an eye-saw and she tells me that this year it is going up for sale in their rummage sale for a tenth of the price she paid for all the equipment. A year ago if she had taken those same dollars and got a Personal Trainer for her husband, imagine where he could have been today. I know of another man who so wanted his wife to get in better shape. He went out and purchased a $7,000 treadmill with all the bells and whistles added including an HD television screen which was attached so that she could watch her television shows. After a while he then went out and purchased an additional $5,000 in weights to give her other options. One year later she had stopped using the treadmill and he was the only one using the weights. Imagine if he had taken those same dollars and just gotten her a Personal Trainer. Personal training has become very important in this society today. Back just 50 years ago, this occupation was looked at only by the rich and famous and only they could afford to pay the prices that the personal trainers back then were asking. Now however, because of the health crisis we have in America today, many are calling on personal trainers to help them help themselves. Personal trainers are looked at in a higher light and are now being asked to help people change their lifestyles. Andy has been a Personal Training client for some time now. I remember when I first met him. His problem was portion control and because of that he was morbidly obese. I remember meeting his family and them telling me that I needed to help him. I knew that this was not going to be easy because realistically as a personal trainer you only get to see y our people for no more than 2-3 hours a week at best and the rest of the time they are on their own. Well I began to work with Andy and from the beginning it was a struggle. It wasn’t the working out that was the problem, it was the over eating. I tried several techniques and even made up a few techniques to get him to curve his appetite and nothing was working. As time went on though, I began to notice that he liked consistency and planning, so I went with that and got him a scheduling book and I wrote in his book that every day he was to eat with me here at Parkers Place. Well, that seems to have worked and he is now on a great schedule and without him actually knowing it, he has changed his lifestyle and he enjoys it. It has been over a year now and Andy and I have become good friends through this process. A good Certified Personal Trainer will bring a few things to the table that will help you or that person you want to help out. They will bring accountability, knowledge, and enjoyment and in the end lifestyles will be changed and isn’t that what we want for our friends who need it? Think about it. Instead of buying all that equipment that in the end won’t be used, go buy a personal trainer and really make an impact in that person’s life forever.

Great idea

I was talking to a dear friend just the other day and we were talking about this very subject, what motivates people to get in better fitness condition. After talking to her we came to the conclusion that a person can only motivate themselves. No one else can. Yes, as a personal trainer we may be able to fuel that fire and help them keep it burning, but in the end if you don’t want to do something you won’t do it. I remember once having a member who was told by several people that he was not going to live another 10 years if he did not get himself in better shape. His doctor said this and his spouse said this and then finally when I met him I told him this. This man had to lose a good 400 pounds even to be considered for gastric bypass surgery. I remember one day meeting up with him and asking him to come into my office so that we could talk. He had not been coming in and not doing his workouts and he was falling back into his old patterns. I sat there and listened to him for 20 minutes give excuse after excuse and finally when I could stand it no more I told him that unless he lost 400 pounds he would make it to his 40th birthday. He was 36 at the time. Even with me getting in his face, it didn’t matter. I could not motivate him to make the changes he needed to make. He is 39 now and in February he caught a bad cold and to this day he is still suffering from the effects of that cold. He has been bed ridden for three months now. I had a man come into my office and start complaining about the medications he was taking. He hated taking them every day and really wanted to stop. I asked him what his doctor told him to do to get off the medications and he told me that he needed to lose 50 pounds and get his cholesterol below 200 once his weight was under control his diabetes should be under better control. Well a few months later he is still complaining about this medication and in reality is doing nothing about it. He tells me that some days he wants to work out and sweat and some days he just doesn’t want to. Over the last several months he has not lost an ounce of weight. He has not followed my advice about his diet. Yes, he is one that eats at restaurants three times a day. He has not followed the work outs I have given him. What will it take for him to finally get this done… not even he knows. He says he doesn’t want to pass away, but he is doing nothing to help his situation get better. The spirit may be willing but in most cases, the flesh is weak. Outside influences intertwine themselves into our everyday life and that gets us to do things that we know we ordinarily would not do. I am working with a man right now and he has a food problem, he doesn’t understand portion control so I am teaching him that. One day while eating here at the Parkers Place a member notices what he is eating and asks me why I am starving him and then tells me that he should be eating more than what I have given him. I immediately chimed in and told that member to be quite and remember that they too were here because of their weight problem. At that this member looked at me and walked away. Here is a great example of outside influences. If I had left him to get his own lunch, someone would have told him to get more than he really needed and for no real reason. This man is now learning portion control and has lost a ton of weight. The person who told him that he was not eating enough and should eat more, well, they are still struggling and just the other day stopped in my office to talk about, of all things, nutrition (go figure). Now I know we all have people that we want to help get in better shape. We all know people that are 50 pounds or more over weight and getting heavier. I want to share an idea with you that my friend and I had discussed. How many of us think that if we buy our friends or even ourselves a treadmill or some piece of cardio equipment we would be helping them or ourselves out in a huge way. We would be giving them a way to lose those unwanted pounds. You know just as well as I what happens to those cardio pieces of equipment after a few months, they become places we can put out books and old cloths. The problem with most people is not bad equipment, it is accountability and what better way to have someone hold you accountable than a Certified Personal Trainer. We go out and spend thousands of dollars on pieces of equipment only to have them break down or we just plain lose interest and stop using it. However, what if you, instead of buying that equipment, bought a Personal Trainer for that person with those same dollars? What benefit would there be in you doing that for them. What a good personal trainer can do for you will not just be immediate, but everlasting. In my next blog I will be discussing the benefits of highering a Personal Trainer for the long term.----

Freedom

Imagine being in your late 40’s and still being able to do the things that you were able to do in your 20’s. Imagine looking and feeling like you were still 23 years old while all the getting close to that 50 year mark. Imagine once being a dancer, runner or a gymnast and still being able to perform at those same levels. Imagine not feeling embarrassed or uneasy around others when you have your shirt off. There is freedom in not being obese. When you are in good fitness shape, the common cold cannot stay with you a long time. I can’t remember the last time I had a cold that stayed with me for more than a day. At night those that are in good fitness shape get good fast-rem sleep. Their bodies tend to relax much deeper and much longer. I have been told by so many that once they lost that excess weight, their whole world opened up. For so long they had been carrying around extra weight that they just could not shake. Even sitting was difficult. Their shoulders hurt, their chest was tight, their legs were always tired, their feet hurt and their lower back was always hurting. Then they lost that excess weight and like night turns to day, those issues disappeared and now they were able to do things that they thought they would never be able to do again. Two years ago, I decided to try something. So many people were telling me that I had no idea of what it felt like to be an overweight person, so I decided to put some weight on. What I did was wear a 20 pounds weight jacket around for two weeks without taking it off and boy were my eyes opened. Now I did not change my usual workout schedule, I still did all the same things I would normally do on any given day, but by the end of the first week, I began to compromise my workouts and take short cuts. Running the hill became very difficult at best and instead of going as fast as I usual go, I slowed down big time and cut the amount of times I would run up the hill. Not because I wanted to, it was because I had too. Everyday life, in general, became much harder. I found myself sitting more than I would normally. I found that my shoulders hurt, legs were constantly tires, neck hurt, cardiovascular system was poor at best. My feet and hands were swollen most of the time and I began to make excuses on why I shouldn’t do certain things. Those two weeks were very hard to get through. Then after that two weeks were over I took that 20 pound vest off and what a difference. The hill that seemed so hard became much easier. I could stand for a much longer amount of time without feeling faint or tired. My feet and hands were no longer swollen. I felt free and now able to do anything I choose to do and with ease. I now had a bit of a clue. The question I asked myself however was, how can anyone not want this for themselves? How can anyone stay the way they are and not strive for better and better health? What happens in the mind set of an obese person when the doctor says that they are 100 pounds overweight and getting heavier every time they see them? Why don’t they just get themselves better? Question we will try and tackle over the next several weeks. For now however know this, true freedom, true healthy freedom cannot be put into words. Here I am at the age I am at and able to do things that people much younger than I wish they could do. No I am not bragging I a stating a fact and I want you to experience it to. Tomorrow let’s begin to make that step into the world of total healthy freedom. Tomorrow!--------

the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak

Most medications cannot cure you. They only allow you to operate at the fitness level you are currently at and no more. Most people don’t realize that. They think that once they get that medication in them that they are cured and they can go back to life as they knew it…and there lies the problem. Pharmacies are making billions off of our ignorance and dependence on medications. Health insurance companies are losing billions trying to keep up with the demand and for them to be able to keep up with the demand they need to charge us more in our premiums. There goes the vicious cycle. Have you noticed how some medications make you thirsty or your doctor tell you to drink plenty of water with the medication you are taking? Did you know that most medications cause you to gain excess weight? Think about what medications are… they are poison entering the system. Once these poisons enter the system they need to be diluted so that they don’t kill the body. The body dilutes these medications by surrounding them with water which weakens its strength. Now you know why there is such weight gain when you take certain prescriptions. But the question still remains, what do we need to do as a nation to fight this obesity problem? You have heard me say this many times that the only way to put a stop to the obesity problem is by us understanding that exercise, activity based exercise, is not a bad thing and MUST be done. Our body works better when stimulated. Our blood is the best healing agent we could ever have. But the problem is that we constantly barrage it with bad elements and over indulge ourselves in foods that at the end of the day do not allow the body to work efficiently. Many times I have seen where an overweight person with all types of ailments loses tons of weight and magically those issues disappear. God made this body to take care of itself, but if we constantly abuse it, at some point we will have to pay the piper. The unknown question is when and to what extent. We need to hold each other accountable. We all know right from wrong and good from bad. We all know those things that are good for us and those things that are not. We need to lift up our brothers and sisters and help them when they are weak or need a helping hand when they are fading fast. We need to hold each other accountable. We cannot do this on our own. Have you ever heard the saying, “A doctor who self medicates himself has a fool for a patient”? There is truth to that. In other words if you think you can defeat this obesity issue by yourself, your kidding yourself. Hey, so far, by you thinking that you can handle it yourself, look where it has gotten us. Think about that. We are imprisoning ourselves in our own bodies. We are keeping ourselves down from really achieving higher heights. Obesity, at any level, is not good and is a total slap in the face of God. Thru accountability of one another we can take back our health and fight this obesity epidemic. Tomorrow I will discuss the freedom we have when we take obesity off the table.-------

42

I just heard this number last night and it did not surprise me. According to a report that I just heard on MSNBC, by 2030, 42 percent of Americans will be overweight and by that time an additional 11 percent of Americans will be over 100 pounds or more over weight. They say that the number of Americans now over weight is 33.9 percent and they see no time in the future where that number is going to slow down. The question I want to tackle is why, why that number is ever increasing and rapidly picking up steam. Some people believe that this epidemic is due to our over eating and sedentary lifestyles we live now and they are right. I was talking to a person just the other day and we talked about the jobs our fathers had when we were growing up and how they were so labor intense. They would get up every morning and walk to the train or bus station, stand on a crowded train or bus and get to a job where they would use their hands for 8 to 9 hours then walk back to the station only to stand on the way back home. Now every American has a car and drives to work only to sit at a computer for 8 to 9 hours and only take a break when they get bored and then they eat at their desk for the most part. Back only 50 years ago, our mothers never has to tell us to go outside. It was more the other way around; they would tell us to stay inside. We hated rainy days because that meant we would be stuck inside and who really wanted to be inside when there were so many things we could do outside. Stick-ball, basketball, hide–and-go-seek, so many games we played. Now with the internet surge kids still see their friends but now on line. They sit in front of a computer screen killing each other and talking on the web. You would think that my kids would not be prone to this but quite the opposite. Just the other day I went into the basement to find one child on the computer skyping and the other playing on the Xbox while talking to his friends on his head set. I shook my head in disbelief. This is were America is going. Did you know that the FDA had stated that our children will not have the same quality of life we now have because of the problem of obesity? By 2030 most of us will be in our 70’s and 80’s and they will be ruling the roost. This really scares me, especially when the trends of getting fat are going up instead of down. I was just in a fashion show and the producer of the show did not think I was 49 years old. His tells me that I don’t look like a 49 or 50 year old man. Well what does one look like? They are overweight with a huge belly, graying beards and fat legs and well out of shape. They are at least 50 pounds overweight and most suffer from back issues of some sort. Exercising for this population of males is only on occasions when they “have the time”, but other than that nothing of great substance. The average waist size for this population of males is about 42” and growing. Their girth (their bellies AKA core) average about 48 inches and growing every year. Their sleep patterns are poor at best and, well family relations, oh boy. Let me just say that what they were able to accomplish physically only 20 years prior they can no longer accomplish nor can they even get close. I don’t have these issues. Just a few weeks ago I went to get a new belt. I looked for the longest time in the men’s department only to get frustrated and end up purchasing a belt in the young men’s department. Now I wasn’t frustrated at the selection of belts they had, I was frustrated because in could not find a belt in my size in the men’s department. You see I have a 29 inch waist and I don’t have a stomach and in the men’s department they started at waist size 34. REALLY! I did notice one other thing while I was looking frantically, if I were a size 42, I would have had my pick of the litter with no problem. THIS IS BAD, REALLY BAD. The question we need to ask ourselves is what we need to do to stop this trend. The answer is quite easy and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to explain. We need to get active again. We need to stop sitting and get walking. Did you know that the process of us gaining significant permanent weight starts right after we graduate from high school? The reason I can only give is our ability to drive instead of walk to where ever we want to go and our ability to consume alcoholic products as well as eating really bad food when we go off to college or work. Our activity, unless involved in college sports, diminishes quickly and we begin to switch from an active lifestyle to one where we find ourselves sitting at a computer screen or in a library for hours at a time. Unless this trend changes, I can’t see it getting better anytime soon. I knew that when I was in college, we had something called the freshmen 10 which is now the freshmen 20. What is that? They said back in my day that by the end of your first year of college you would have gained 10 extra pounds now that number is 20. Bad food, bad sleep patterns, over consumption of alcohol, and lack of activity are all the reason for this trend and when we get out of college it only gets worse. In this society today our medical expenses have tripled over the last few years and growing out of control. Medications are quickly become part of our everyday existence. We are becoming more reliant on medications than ever before. We spend over $550 billion dollars a year to medicate ourselves so that we can keep ourselves alive. REALLY! Medications are allowing us to feel as though we are ok when quite the opposite is true. Tomorrow I will discuss this in more detail and what we need to do as a nation to stop this trend and take back our health and stop this obesity epidemic.

Satruday's Challenge

Yes every year I do this challenge and yes every year we have surprise winners. This year however, instead of everyone having the same height, as far as boxes are concerned, I raised or lowered the height according to the person’s ability. This year Sarah won at 33:26 minutes followed closely behind by Jackie at 33:20 minutes. Everyone how ever did well and now has new bench marks to pursue.

Then we all talked about something that I feel is real important, their heritage. At first when I had my initial conversation with them everyone of them told me that they just wanted live to see their grandchildren, with the exception of Sarah who told me something much different. Everyone of them are in pursue of a better more active life. Everyone of them wants to get out of their imprisonment and feel free to do everything and anything. The question here is how can the accomplish that and how long it will take.

Well the answer to both questions is…a lifetime. The pursuit of a quality fitness life is a process that takes forever but during the journey many mild markers are achieved and dreams are made. Here is the best part though, our next generation, our kids, benefit more than we do. We are becoming the fattest nation in the world and this trend has got to stop. But how can it stop if we don’t give our kids the ability to know that they can win this battle of obesity. Our kids are a mirror image of ourselves and who we are…someday they WILL be.

So with that mentioned to them I began the process of individually talking to each one of them and allowing them to dream and picture themselves finally getting out of their prison and beginning a trend that will last for generations. There was not a dry eye in the place but an excitement that transcended even the most down-trotted person.

There was one other thing I did on Saturday. Jackie has been a member of Parkers Place for a few years now and she has been fighting weight issues and physical injury for years now. Besides a nagging leg injury that has been with her forever she also has a shoulder injury that really needs looking into. Most people would have quit and given up and by rights she could do that and many would consider her excuses valid. But she doesn’t see that. All she sees is just obstacles that need over coming and she has overcome them in a big way.

The other day she calls me and tells me that she was trying on some cloths the other day and she found the first pair of jeans she wore to see my a year ago. She said that they were a size 21 and now she wears a size 9. My response to her was, “So what does this mean?” I’m sorry, I’m a guy. She hangs up the phone and about 10 minutes later she comes walking in with these jeans and shows me. WHAT A DIFFERENCE! WOW! She has entered herself into many running challenges and has reduced her mile time from 15 minutes to 10 minutes. Best yet though, two of her friends have followed her for such a long time during this journey that they too have decided to join and joined the Weight Loss Challenge and lost almost 30 pounds in less than 6 weeks.

Because of her efforts and how she has shown just not me but here friends how dedicated she is to her fitness, I have put her name on my FITNESS board for everyone to see. This board was designed for those who have really struggled and overcome many obstacles and now have achieve levels of fitness that surpass anything they ever thought they were going to achieve.

How about you? Are you making a difference in your children’s lives? Can they say that you have shown them that your health is the most important thing to you? Do you show it to them or do you just talk a good game? Remember, who you are…one day your kids will be.

total confusion

I was talking to a member just yesterday and we were discussing her goals and what it would take for her to achieve them. Her biggest goal was to LOSE WEIGHT and after listening to her for several minutes I chimed in and said that losing weight was not a goal and her eyes lit up like she had seen a ghost. After several minutes of trying to tell her why I said that, she folder her arms and stated that she did not believe me and then gave me her argument. It was the following:

1) She had a lot of weight to lose and once she lost the weight she would feel better
2) Her weight is what is keeping her from doing anything
3) Her weight has given her diabetes
4) Her weight has given her low self esteem

Now it in of themselves these are valid points, but only points. After listening to her I asked her about what she did in high school and college and she told me that she was an athlete and a good one at that. She showed me pictures of herself just 10 years earlier and I have to say… what a difference a few years have made. I then asked her what she thought had changed and she told me that when she was really active she ate like a horse and now that she is not as active she still eats like a horse. I then told her that she was right with that statement. Our bodies get accustom to the fuel we give it to support the activity we are presently in and when we slow that activity down unfortunate we don’t slow our eating paterns down.

Then I asked her a big question… “Say you achieve this goal of losing the 50 pounds you want. What next? How will you keep it off?” She looked at me as if I were speaking a different language, thought about it and said, “I don’t know I guess I will not be able to eat certain things any more, which I am not looking forward to doing. But I guess I will no longer be able to eat like I do now and become very cautious at what I put in my mouth.”

Now that statement she made is a true one but I said something to her that made her take notice and caused her to think… “All food is good and God gave us food for our consumption. Without it we won’t live. There is nothing wrong with having a hamburger or two with fries.” She was shocked to hear that come from me but then I went on. “The problem is not the food; it is you and your inactivity. By focusing on your weight, you make food the enemy and it is not. By focusing on your weight, now you say to yourself… I can’t do this or I can’t have that and in the end research shows that you put a lot of stress and tension on yourself and eventually give in and do what you said you weren’t going to do. You restrict yourself of the food when in essence you don’t have to and shouldn’t. Your correct response when faced with a dilemma should be that you choose not to indulge in that food because of a specific reason outside of our weight issue.”

The problem we are facing as a society in inactivity and wrong focus. The media wants us to believe that it is about our weight so that we will buy their products. It is not about our weight and if we just began to get active and plot activity based goals, we would feel much freer and much more in control of our ultimate outcome… better fitness. Your goals should be activity based and not weight based. Weight is the end result of you achieving an activity based goal. As an example, take the person who can run a mile in 12 minutes and after a few months can now run a mile in 8 minutes, do you think they lost some weight? Now if they want to stay at that level of activity, 8 minute miles, do you think they will maintain that new weight? Or take the swimmer or walker or biker, whatever, plot your goals in an activity then and only then will you finally LOSE THE WEIGHT you were looking for and keep it off. There is the real answer to the dilemma on how to lose the weight you want and keep it off.