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The Greatest Fitness Story Ever Told!

By Ken Karnack

The greatest finess story ever told started a few years ago when I was doing a consultation with a potential client and she really wanted to loose weight, or so she said. We talked about her lifestyle and her spending habits. Her name was Shirley, and she needed to loose around 20 to 30 pounds or so. She was not working out, eating out almost 3 times a day, alot and she was getting engaged! Her goal was to loose 20-30 lbs before the wedding that was coming up in 6 months. PERFECT! I had plenty of time to prepare her for success.

After a good 40 minutes or so she just blurted out, "how much was personal training"? So we went over the prices, and we determined that she would need 50 sessions to get to her goal. The cost was $3250.00 for 50 sessions @ $65 per. Do you see how this is becomming the greatesst fitness story ever told? She said "it was way to much for her budget". Way to much for her budget i thought, she just said she eats out 3 times a day? So I decided to dig a little deeper into her spending habits to see just how much she was spending, ON HER HEALTH. So I got out the calculator and started adding up the totals. Your not gonna believe this amount of money she spent on food outside the home. remember she can't afford personal training! Here we go...

Breakfast: McDonald's $4.50

Starbucks: $3.50

Lunch: fast food or restaurant $5-12.00

Starbucks: $3.50

Dinner: eat out at restaurant ( her and fiance`) $50-60 with wine 5 days a week

This was a normal Monday through Friday week. The weekends were mostly the same. So we talked more about doing 50 sessions 2 days a week for 6 months. I started to total up her money spent on food over the course of a year and here is what we came up with. Using the totals for each meal and ONLY the $5 bucks for lunch for a Conservative number. We got $24,000 for the year. Remember this does not count the extra Starbucks snacks a few times a week when she was hungry. So naturally the next question was, "how much do you invest in your health?" OMG, she said. OK, you got me, sign me up!

What does this mean to you?

Most times when people are thinking about getting involved in a personal training program they are in pre-contemplation phase. Meaning that they want to do it, but just can't figure out how to make it work for them. I wonder how much you spend on your food intake outside the home? One of the world's leading economists, Paul Zane Pilzner noted that back in the early 60's we ate out only 5% of the time and by the 90's we ate out over 50% of the time. That being said, how many extra calories do we eat that cause us to gain weight?

Setting realistic goals!

Lets do a simple calculation on calories to get a better idea of how much work is involved in getting those extra pounds off! If you want to lose 30 pounds, you have around 105,000 calories that need burned off. If 1 pound is the equal to 3500 calories then it will take you 210 days of working out for at least 30-45 minutes and burning an EXTRA 500 calories a day. So, if your personal trainer, doctor or best friend told you to do CARDIO work out 3 days a week for 60 minutes, is that enough? Lets do the math! If worked out 3 days a week for 30 minutes and were lucky to burn off off 500 calories each workout for the whole year you would be right at your goal, right? Wrong! You would be 54 days short and a few pounds away. Confused? So am I.

For more information on planning your fitness program talk to a certified personal trainer about what will work best for you. Cutting calories and living on shakes and bars are not gonna cut it. If your thinking that getting on a elliptical, doing endless amount crunches, and cutting your calories is going to get you lean and fit, think again. I am asking you this time around consult with your personal trainer about your very own online customized meal plan and fitness program.

The greatest fitness story ever told is a real life story, I just had to tell!

About the Author:


Ken Karnack is the owner of Old School Fitness with the best Dallas Personal Trainers.