It has occurred to me that I have NEVER written a blog about what we DO at our Personal Training Studio. So after 9 years of owning and operating the PT studio with my husband Lynn Lingenfelter, I have decided I will write about what we actually DO. Yes I have written about circumstances and situations that clients often encounter on their road to living healthy. Discussed what our definition of healthy is and how to get IT! Blogs have often been about food and how it effects our body in good and/or bad ways depending on what your eating  and about exercise, the ways and hows…BUT not the DO at Fit Transformations so here goes!

Well it all starts off with a personal consultation (FREE) where we sit down and discuss what is is that you are REALLY trying to do with your health and fitness. We will often do  your bodyfat to determine where you are on the scale of BMI or Bodyfat percentages and what the healthy range is for your age and activity level (or  in most cases lack of activity level). Always we want to know WHY you are looking to make changes in your health and fitness. Whether you are just tired of being overweight and want to lose some weight, have a high school reunion coming up or all the way to the extreme of having you Dr. tell you you MUST do something to lose some bodyfat or else! 

Our typical client is someone interested in losing anywhere from 15-20lbs and  all the way up through 150lbs. And with our population having overweight and/or obese folks upwards of 75% of us you can see why this is our most common client. Although most of our clients are looking to get rid of the love handles, jiggle in arms, sagging butts or well any other problem areas you can think of we also usually have a few athletes training with us at any given time throughout the year…football players, soccer players, baseball players, basketball players and the list goes on. Lots of athletes looking to take their game to the next level! Most of our clients are in age anywhere from early 30 – 70’s and so can therefore afford to pay a personal trainer. If we get someone younger it is generally an athlete or son/daughter of a current client.

So we are sitting down discussing what brought you to call us and inquire about what we do. Remember most people call us who only see our before and after photos on the windows in our business or on our company SUV ( unless they are a referral – in which case they already KNOW all about us). And so they call and want to know what we are all about and see if they can become like our pictures. You come on in and we sit down to find out WHAT you want to DO and WHY! After establishing all that I will then ask you if you have tried other routes to achieve this goal. This often gets to be really interesting but I have to say after doing this for so long and hearing ALL kinds of stories I just don’t know if I can be surprised anymore but what some people will do to get smaller. I hope you noticed I did NOT say get healthier, stonger or fitter. And that is all I will say about that in this article because I am sure I did write at least one blog on this topic before….if not I will soon.

At this point I will explain HOW we can help you out. And this is what we DO. We are a private personal training studio that has one-on-one personal training. We are by appointment only and all that means is we are not THERE unless we have an appointment with someone to be there. Lynn and I have always and still believe the one-on-one is the best formatt. It gives us an opportunity to help our clients in other ways besides just putting them through their paces with weight training. We discuss their food journal, their cardio schedule and try to head of any problems and/or help the client solve problems or overcome situations while in them or before they occurr. We do and have done groups but they are not as educational or as productive for our clients. But again it depends on ultimately what your goals are. If you just want to have fun with your girlfreinds and use working out as your get together time …sounds great. Just don’t expect INCREDIBLE results with little effort put into your workouts! And of course I would tell you that…

What has always seperated us from other Personal Trainer’s, studio’s or gyms is how we put it all together for you. We use Bill Phillip’s Body-for-Life approach. That approach incorporates weight training, healthy eating of small meals throughout the day and cardio to develop a LIFESTYLE. And it is a lifestyle we preach. We want you to make friends with food. Learn how to live with food and exercise for the rest of your life. In fact I always TELL folks this is not a GET FIT QUICK plan here. We are going to TEACH you how to love and take care of this body God gave you. How to fuel it with quality food. How to strength train properly and effectively. How much to cardio. How to do it effectively. You see it is a program where we teach you everything you need to know and do for the rest of your life to live a long and healthy life.

So we have established where you are right NOW. Determined where you want TO BE. When determining how much bodyfat you want to lose we will discuss WHEN we believe this can be done by such and such a date. I would get out our packages and we can figure our together what works best with your schedule and your investment into your health and fitness. We have determined HOW  we will do this – with our help and expertise we can accomplish this together. And of course the WHY that brought you into our studio to begin with. SO we have answered all the big questions …WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

Always love FEEDBACK!!!

God Bless You,

Evey

I was initially planning on making this blog entry solely about Geneen Roth’s newest book “Women Food and God” but have decided to vent just a little before my insight into this book. So here goes…after training my clients this morning I went off to get my cardio in for the day. For me that is a 10 mile rollerblade on our beautiful bike trails here in Central Florida. As I am getting all geared up and getting my music going an old acquaintance of mine from several years ago runs by with another woman. And all of the sudden I am just irritated. Let me tell you why. Because she is as out of shape as she ever was and well sorry…but it just gets me all pissy some times when you spend time with people, and answer their questions repeatedly over and over again and what do you find them doing? NOT WHAT YOU SUGGESTED!!! Ok so at least she is trying to get healthy and is out running with her friend (exactly what she was doing years ago)! Yes she was. OK and…. what about all the time I spent aswering her food questions? What about all the time I explained weight training? Or any of the other health and fitness questions she and her friends regularly inquired from me almost daily? Yes I know I have NO CONTROL over OTHERS. And the reality is most people just can not HEAR. OK, OK, OK  really what else is to be said! This is the personal trainer in me writing this…If you have any insight  and you would like to enlighten me further please feel free to comment…

Ok so what about this book…huh? Well I have to say I picked up this book because I had read a brief summary of it and was intrigued. And of course the title is really, really catchy too! I am totally into the whole body, mind and spirit thing right now so of course being the reader I am I wanted to scope out this book. I later discovered that this author is very well respected. Been on Oprah and had written other Bestsellers. All interesting to me because I knew none of that at the time I bought the book. Had never heard of this author before. The review and title hooked me.

Well it was good enough to get me to read almost all of it in one sitting. That is a good sign because if it was at all boring I wouldn’t get past chapter one and never open the book again. This author bases all her observations on experiences she has had helping women over the past 30+ years in retreat settings and counseling get a handle on their food issues. And she is a great storyteller. She fills all her chapters up with stories of women who have had enlightnening experiences with her program and great successes. Her program basically being (straight from the book jacket) “The way you eat is inseperable from your core beliefs about being alive. Your relationship with food is an exact mirror of your feelings about love, fear, anger, meaning, transformation and, yes, even God.”

Overall a great, great book. Lots to digest. Funny, very funny and very relatable stories shared by many, many different women from all backgrounds and situations. All kinds of food issues. You will definately get pulled in if your a woman who has struggled with food  at any time in your life. And really how many of us haven’t?

Now about the God thing. Didn’t really get the feel with where she was going with all that. Yes God is sorta a part of the program but in what form I am still unsure of. For some reason I just never got a clear image. When I finished the book last week the feel I had was I probably need to go back and read some of her earlier stuff to get a better feel of where her God thing is here. So, not so clear on this and I’m thinking that was puposeful (or it could justs be way over my head…hahaha). Never does good to offend people now does it!!!!

Geneen Roth and her newest book “Women Food and God” gets an A from me. It is very interesting and I will be reading her earlier works NOW. Must find out her God angle!!!

Always interested in your feedback. Don’t be shy….

God Bless You,

Evey

So as many of your reading this already know - my husband and I are involved in Bill Phillips online social site for health and fitness -  www.transformation.com. Which is an awesome site with lots and lots of information and motivation from so many involved in overcoming adversities and still learning to live healthy and fit lives that is a must check out if you are at all interested in changing YOUR health. Sometime over this summer Bill rolled out an upgraded Transformation.com site that included a section on preparing healthy meals. Now really there are lots of opportunities on this site for anyone to learn how to live healthy mentally, spiritually and physically.  In fact there is even a section that has videos of how to weight train correctly. Of course of the most interest to me, at this time, was the food videos on how to prepare easy meals. Anything that cuts down on the guess work in the kitchen is a huge plus for me. Yes even though I’ve been into fitness for many years I am aways interested in discovering anything that makes time in the kitchen quicker and easier. Anyone with me here? Can I hear an AMEN!

So I am watching this video in hopes that I will discover another meal to add to my limited meal lists that I am good at and it was an egg meal. Bill and this Chef guy are making it look easy and delicious, both important factors for me to be interested. Now at the end when the meal is complete Bill says something to the effect that this would be the serving size for him. And at that point I almost fall out of my chair. WHAT!!! So I am thinking well if that is Bill’s serving size and he weighs ohhh a few more pounds than me – well, well, well! This is a problem.  Are you getting the hint here that maybe, just maybe I am starting to think that my serving sizes have grown to be probably a BIT more than they really should be. At least if I am interested in trimming down some bodyfat versus adding some bodyfat. Like who really needs help adding bodyfat anyway?

So that was my moment of enlightment. Hmmmm maybe I need to start paying attention to exactly HOW MUCH I am eating whenever I eat? And this folks is a BASIC step of living healthy and fit. It can get out of whack for all of us sometimes. And restaurants don’t help with portion control. Recently me and the girls went for our regular Girl’s Night Out and I ordered chicken kabobs and because I am NOW paying attention to my serving size I ate  just a quarter of the plate and brought the rest home to my husband. The whole plate was about 4 servings for me.

So again if you are trying to trim down it’s a must to get your focus back on how much you are eating at each meal. You see this small, simple stuff can catch you up sometimes if your are not paying attention or are going out alot or are just really, really hungry. Which, by the way, the last part is NOT suppose to happen, the getting really, really hungry because your suppose to be eating through out the day. Yes another BASIC step on your journey.  If your like me and have suddenly discovered, that heck, your eating for two and no your not pregnant!!! Time to get back on track. Back to the basics… Where are you with this basic step?

God Bless You,

Evey