By most people’s account, my journey to health has been an incredible success.  I’ve lost 90 pounds in just under seven months, I’ve reversed three potentially life-threatening health problems, strengthened my mental health and I’ve made tremendous gains in strength, stamina and fitness.

Yet I feel like a total failure.

I compare myself to the incredibly strong men at the gym, although I know that men and women are vastly different and it’s a completely unfair comparison and one which I should absolutely not make.  More importantly, I compare myself to the other women at my gym.  There are no unfit women at the gym.  Gyms are not for the weak.  There are no overweight, struggling, saggy, weak women in the place I visit every day.  Except for me. 

The women I see there are mostly young, with perfect bodies.  Now, that ship has long sailed for me as the effects of gravity and age have taken over, and I don’t expect a perfect body.  But I want to be strong…and they are strong.  Incredibly strong.  Mostly, they are my ideal that I admire and look up to for inspiration and motivation, but it is also mentally damaging.

Logically my mind knows they’ve been at this longer than me, in most cases years longer than me, and I’ve only been at it a few months.  Of course they’re stronger and more fit than I am!  Yet my mind constantly compares and criticizes.  It’s almost impossible not to.  No one talks about this part of fitness and weight loss but it’s very real.

My goal for 2020 is to become as strong as possible, physically, mentally and emotionally.  But my most important goal is to learn how to stop comparing myself to others, to really understand that my journey is not theirs, that I am just as capable as anyone else and that one day, I will reach my goal of amazing physical strength!

Let me start by saying that personal trainers aren’t cheap.  For a decent one, expect to pay anywhere from $60 – $100/hour, though you can often take advantage of sales and discounts.  Before you quit reading, however, hiring a personal trainer should been seen as an investment in your health.  The way I figure it, you can pay significantly less up front to be healthy and strong, or you can pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in rehabilitation and recovery after a heart attack, stroke or injury caused by poor lifestyle habits.  In fact, it is my opinion that healthcare plans should cover the cost of training as preventative medicine.

What should you look for in a trainer?  I completely lucked out with mine.  I had zero clue as to what a personal trainer really did let alone the qualities I should look for, so I went to the front desk of my gym and said, “I want someone to make me stronger.”  Fortunately, I was paired with my amazing trainer.  As in any field, there are great trainers and horrible ones.  A personal trainer should have a certification with an accredited organization, at the very least.  Mine has a B.S. in Fitness and Nutrition, and it shows.  She’s also a fitness nerd; lives, breathes and eats all things health related and shares that love with me and her other clients.  Whoever you hire should have a lot of enthusiasm for their profession.

A good personal trainer shouldn’t just tell you what exercises to do, but she should be able to teach.  In addition, she should be able to help you modify exercises based upon your current mobility, flexibility and other criteria.  She should have extensive knowledge about anatomy and body mechanics in order to develop comprehensive exercise plans and help you handle any pain or discomfort while training.

I train twice a week with my trainer, and four days without.  My trainer developed a plan of exercises for me to do when we are not training together.  I had pain in my left hip from a fracture sustained several years ago; after videotaping me performing certain exercises, she developed a corrective and strengthening program to ease the pain and within a week, it vanished.  I was severely under eating and due to her knowledge of nutrition, she helped me increase my caloric intake from 700 to 1900+/day while continuing to lose 1-2lbs per week.

I think gender matters when choosing a personal trainer.  While I believe that trainers can certainly adequately train those of the opposite gender, I prefer having a female trainer.  She understands the unique challenges being female poses.  She understands the role that hormones can play in weight fluctuations and often talks me down when I discover *gasp* that I’ve gained a pound in a day (water weight, not true weight).  She knows the challenges of being a female weightlifter, the attitudes we face from men (whether overt or covert) and that women’s bodies operate differently; one size definitely does not fit all.

Personality is important as well.  You don’t have to be best friends but you should definitely choose a trainer with whom you’ll get along well.  You’re going to spend a significant amount of time with this person every week doing difficult and exhausting things, so at the very minimum you need to have a cordial relationship.  If you don’t like each other, it’s not going to work out.

A good trainer should be intuitive.  My trainer is excellent at knowing when I’m just being a whiny baby and when my body has truly reached its limit.  It goes without saying that they should also be supportive.  They are there to help lift you up when you’re feeling discouraged and to provide motivation when you can’t seem to muster up enough for yourself.

That said, it’s a reciprocal relationship.  Be kind to your trainer, it’s never okay to verbally abuse them.  Yes, sometimes they make you do things that make you feel like crap but always remember that they’re doing it to help you improve yourself. You need to be respectful of that and of them.  Sometimes I call my trainer mean or a brat.  She also understands that I’m not really serious and I do try to show that I appreciate everything she does for me.

Trainers aren’t mind readers.  If something is causing you pain, you need to tell them.  A good trainer will never make you push through pain and will usually try to get to the bottom of why you are hurting.  Remember that muscle burn is not the same as pain…you want your muscles to burn but anything stabby or sharp needs to be brought to their attention right away.

You need to try your best, all the time.  You don’t have to be perfect by any stretch of the imagination but you need to put forth effort.  Trainers can do a lot for you; they can guide and teach and direct.  But they can’t do the work for you, as much as that would be awesome!  You will get as much out of training as you give; and the more you give, the more results you get.

Lastly, trust your trainer.  Mine has told me to do a lot of things that made me raise my eyebrow at her, but not once has she steered me wrong.  I have yet to sustain an injury following her advice (knock on wood) or gain weight despite the fact that I was convinced that eating more would make me balloon out.  Following her advice, posture changes have eased lower back pain, combining protein meals with higher carb foods have kept my blood sugars stable and eating more has increased my metabolism dramatically.  She’s helped me with psychological struggles surrounding weight loss/gain and has cheered me up when I’ve felt that my progress stalled. 

A great trainer is an invaluable health resource!!

I’ve had to give up Facebook. 

Ever since I’ve discovered health and fitness, my Facebook feeds have reflected my newfound interest; by “kindly” sending me ads promoting health, nutrition and exercise.  Except the problem is that all the articles and videos it so graciously thinks I need feature perfect women; women with flawless muscular bodies or ultra thin, young models.  While I appreciate seeing people who are in prime physical condition, this most definitely does not reflect reality, certainly not MY reality anyway.

After being barraged with image after image of this, I found myself inadvertently questioning myself.  How come I’m not stronger yet?  How come I haven’t lost the remaining pounds yet?  How come I don’t look anything like these women? The mere fact that my subconscious thought I SHOULD look like these women was telling.  It was making me depressed, sad, impatient with myself and frustrated.  It’s not how I want to live my life and so I gave it up and I feel so much better.

Now I only go on social media that uplifts me.  I stay on Instagram because I can choose who I want to follow; women of all shapes and sizes who are inspiring to me and I’m not flooded with ads that I don’t need to see. (Thanks IG!)  My mental and emotional attitude has improved dramatically.  I’m not so hard on myself for not being “there” yet; wherever “there” is.  I like myself again and that’s important.

Social media can be insidious.  It doesn’t tell the whole picture and oftentimes only shows the good, the beautiful, and the perfect.  So-and-so has the perfect body, the perfect career, the perfect life.  Maybe they do, but more often than not, they don’t.  It’s fine if people want to portray themselves a certain way, but when that becomes damaging to my psyche, I draw the line.  It’s a shame because Facebook is the only way I can keep up with childhood friends who live overseas, so I won’t completely abandon it; I’ll check in monthly or so.  But my health – physical, emotional and mental – has become my top priority and I won’t let anything or anyone sabotage that!

We all know that getting fit and eating right result in positive body changes; becoming leaner, stronger and generally in better overall health. However, there are some changes that aren’t exactly positive and no one ever really talks about them. Today, I’m going to.

Saggy Skin
It’s best not to lose weight rapidly. Standard advice is to set a goal of losing 1 to 2 pounds of fat per week. This gives your body time to adjust, especially your skin. But sometimes, losing weight slowly isn’t in the cards, as was in my case. I needed to lose weight as rapidly as possible due to the impending heart attack/stroke if I didn’t. As a result, I have a lot of sagging skin, especially in my upper arms where my weight loss was particularly rapid. My goal is to fill out my skin as much as possible with muscle, but I feel that surgery will be inevitable, not just for aesthetics but for comfort. Chafing and sore skin is a very real thing when you have excess skin. The best way to avoid this is slow, controlled weight loss, but if you have to lose it quickly, do understand that saggy skin will likely become a problem.

Body Temperature
I live in a relatively cold climate but because of all my extra padding, I typically went through the winters with a t-shirt and on really cold days, a light hoodie. I was always warm, and often sweating. As a result of the quick weight loss, my body never had time to gradually adjust to less fat and a different core temperature. Consequently, now I’m always cold; and nights are the worst! I will frequently have to take warm showers and drink hot tea before bed, and most nights I wear several shirts, a sweatshirt and multiple blankets to bed! I’ve had to add large puffy coats to my hoodie collection in order not to freeze and even with all that, shivering is a regular phenomenon. On the plus side, 100 degree summers will probably feel fantastic!

Waste
This topic is in the TMI category but I feel it is an important thing to know. When you start changing your diet, eating less and exercising more, your bowels are going to change. When it first happened it scared the living daylights out of me and I thought something was terribly wrong! Basically, you’re going to poo less both in frequency and quantity. Think about it. You’re eating half of what you did before, and what you are eating isn’t junk, so it’s being utilized efficiently for nutrition, leaving very little waste. It can be uncomfortable and disconcerting, just know that it’s not uncommon.

Medications
If you’re taking medications for various ailments and you start working on your health, make sure to monitor your medications. I have diabetes and was on metformin, but when I lowered my carb intake, lost weight and started exercising frequently, I didn’t think to monitor my blood sugars resulting in some scary scary low blood sugars. The same thing happened with my high blood pressure, and I almost fainted several times before checking with my doctor who told me to discontinue my medication.

Metabolism
A common tactic for people who want to lose weight is to cut calories. If you’re eating 3000 calories per day and not exercising, this is a good strategy, but you can take it too far. When I started cutting my food I didn’t know what I was doing and cut myself to around 700 calories per day. After the first couple of weeks, I didn’t feel hungry anymore because on that severe of a caloric restriction my body went into starvation mode and my metabolism shut down. It was only after working with my personal trainer did I discover that this was neither healthy nor sustainable, but in order to prevent rapid weight gain, we started tracking my food and slowly increased my caloric intake by about 100 calories per day each week. And holy cow, did that speed up my metabolism! I started burning food like crazy and was so hungry all the time! It was great to eat again! My caloric intake is currently around 1600/day, and I’m still losing weight. My goal is to be around 2000 taking into account how active I am. Everyone’s requirements will differ, but don’t starve yourself. It doesn’t do you any good!

Injury
If you exercise, you’re going to get hurt. It’s inevitable. You’re going to lose concentration, or step in a pothole in the dark, or pull a muscle. The best thing you can do for yourself is to realize that injury is part of being an active person, and if you injure yourself, take care of yourself. “No pain, no gain” is absolutely false! There shouldn’t be pain when you exercise and if there is, you’re doing something wrong. Please note that pain is not the same thing as muscle burn, which is something that absolutely should be happening! If you hurt yourself, rest until you get better. You’re not going to do yourself any favors by pushing through it. If you do, you’re just more likely to create a bigger problem, like needing knee replacement surgery which will take a lot more work to recover from than a strained ligament!

Whenever someone starts a new weight loss program, diet, or exercise plan, the odds of long term success are extremely low. Why do you think diet programs and fitness plans are a multi billion dollar industry?

Here’s the key to success: unless you completely overhaul your lifestyle and mindset, you will not be successful.

Let me explain. Most people go into weight loss thinking, “If I can only lose xx amount of weight, I’ll be happy and healthy.” So they eat right, exercise and do whatever they need to to get the weight off. If they’re lucky, they reach their goal and think, I did it! Then gradually, they’ll start reverting back to their old habits and pretty soon they’re back to where they started, plus some, and the cycle continues.

If you think that way, you will fail 100% of the time. A successful journey to health is about a complete change of lifestyle and way of thinking. You have to come up with a way of living that is healthy for you, and most importantly, sustainable over the long haul. If you want to be healthy, fitness and nutrition have to become an important part of your daily life, not just something you do to reach your goal. You have to commit to living that way for the rest of your life.

For me, that looks like making going to the gym and doing my cardio a priority each day. I do it first thing in the morning, even if that means I have to wake up at 5 am and go to bed early each night because for me, my health is a priority in my life. I do not look at exercise as a chore, something I have to do, but rather, as something I get to do to help me live a healthy and fulfilling life. It is no different than the other daily duties in my life like brushing my teeth, taking a shower or eating breakfast. If I don’t want my teeth to rot, I brush them. If I don’t want to smell, I bathe. If I don’t want to end up an invalid, I exercise.

If you change your mindset, and look at proper nutrition and exercise as simply another part of your day, the odds of being successful long term are much more likely to increase. This isn’t easy because often it means giving up your way of life. But if you’re truly committed, you can find ways to improve your health while still living life. Like to drink? Go for light beers or only drink that wine three nights a week instead of six. Like to eat out? Choose heart healthy restaurants or eat out fewer times each week. Even small changes can dramatically increase health and slim the waistline.