Trainer Notes: 5/27/2009

This week was great! Jason has made all of his appointments this week even with having a family wedding going on this weekend. In order to still get the amount of workouts in needed to maintain his progress Jason has done a couple of "two a days!" On those days he did his workout in the morning and did his cardio sessions with us later in the day. This was his last week on this program and I would say he executed it very well. Every day wether he felt energized or not he put forth the effort the program demands. He has made many comments about how he is amazed how far he has come and how good it feels to get to the end of the workout and look back to see what he had accomplished. Early next week we get to do another assessment. I'm really excited to see how this last months adjustments have payed off. We did not take an end of the week weight this week because we knew that the assessment was coming soon. I will let you all know the results next week.

Nutrition Notes:5/27/2009

Jason's weekly meal plan is to keep up the good work! Jason has really come a long way. He is planning and preparing for success on a daily and weekly basis. Through going through our EAT! Nutritional Program, Jason has developed new habits that will continue to help him transform his body.

Jason has worked hard at becoming more aware of his nutritional need through using our hunger scale to monitor his portions. He has trained his body to better understand when to eat and when to stop. His portion sizes are right on target for what it needed to see the great results that he has been seeing and will continue to see. The best part about is that we have not counted one calorie in the process! Jason is not relying on a calorie count or a point system or prepackaged meals to know how much to eat (he has tried all of that on his own and the results do not last!) he has reestablished the natural understanding of when to eat and how much to eat that we all had when we entered into this world as babies.

It is just too bad that the habits of our culture and the business of life has taken a good amount of our world out of that natural instinct and understanding into destructive habits and a disconnected relationship with food. Great job Jason!

Jason Video Blog: Week 11

Week 11 Update

One of the things that keeps my workouts interesting is variety. As you can see from my latest video, I am doing everything from boxing, to pushups to various exercises with a medicine ball. My workouts are definitely never boring. The variety also keeps my body from adjusting to the stresses that are placed on it so I don't run into a plateau. I know from personal experience that boredom can keep you from maintaining a regular routine. Thanks to the trainers at Fitness Together, that is never an issue.

I am happy to say that I am continuing to lose weight (now down more than 25 pounds) and feel like all the goals that I had when this competition started are attainable. Believing it was possible had been a mental hurdle I needed to get over.

Trainer Notes:5/16/2009

First, I want to start of by apologizing to all of Jason's loyal followers for not having any trainer notes for you to read for the last couple months. From here on out you will have an update every monday. During this gap you have still been able to follow Jason through his blogs and videos. Through those devices I'm sure you can tell how hard he has been working and I hope you have enjoyed seeing how he is able to fight through the physical and mental challenges that come with transforming a very out of shape body into a health, stronger, faster and better looking body!

As you can hear from Jason's blog on 16th he has been working very hard. He has been able to overcome frustration and a few weeks of slow scale movement to break through barriers to accomplish some pretty awesome goals. This is one reason why we find we are successful at seeing results at Fitness Together. We don't give up and we don't allow our clients to give up. If losing weight and improving your fitness level were easy, everyone would be fit. By having the means to measure progress often through our fitness assessments, we are able to adjust programs accordingly to elicit the physical response we are looking for and establish the game plan needed to get there.

By analyzing the latest assessment results I was able to see that Jason's body was responding a little differently than we thought it would in the last program. With a few adjustments in his newest program that I wrote on 5/6/09 things seem to going in the right direction. This goes to show that everyone's body respond diffently to different programs and shows the importance of going through an in depth and accurate fitness assessment. As you can see after the adjustment to his program and some nutritional tweaks he has gone from 294.75 lbs on 5/9 to 288 lbs on 5/16 and has even gone further to see a great improvement to 284 lbs a the end of the week on 5/22. I'm Really proud of Jason. he is doing everything I ask of him and is reaping the benefits of it!!

Frustration turns into success!

This is my 2nd time writing this blog entry. The first I wrote before my fitness evaluation. I am writing this blog entry after my evaluation. Why? Glad you asked...

From week 5 to week 8, I had only lost 4 pounds. I was really frustrated, given how hard I was working. My trainers floated a few possibilities, incuding the possibility I was insulin resistant (backed up by my blood tests), making it harder to lose weight. We took my measurements and I waited for my results. That was Saturday, May 9th.

On Wednesday, May 13th, I got the results. I lost another 2 inches from my waist (almost 4" total now), 1/2 inch from my neck (1" total) and lost over 4% bodyfat (over 6% total). That helped me to change my outlook; I was losing inches, but not weight. But this next number went a long way to explaining things further...

While I lost 13 pounds of bodyfat, I gained 9 pounds of muscle. That realization will now allow the trainers at Fitness Together to slightly change things up once again to slow my muscle gain and increase my fat loss. I'll admit, though, that it is difficult not to focus solely on the scale.

Feeling good about those numbers, I chose to hop on the scale anyways the very next day and was happy to see I had quickly dropped 7 pounds! So much for my stalled weight loss. Feeling even more motivated, I decided this past Saturday to run to my training appointment at 5:15 a.m., a total of 3.7 miles. As I arrived (just in time), I was greeted by Chad, who was bursting with excitement over my accomplishment. I had a great strength training workout and then did a combination run/walk on my way home. 7.4 miles and it wasn't even 8 a.m. yet!

The lesson I took from all this? Your mind controls your body; keep your mind and your will strong and your body will (eventually) follow.

'Til next time,

Jason

Jason Video Blog: Week 9

Week 8 Video Update-Cardio Day