I’m no fitness expert. Not a doctor. Nor could I touch my toes six months ago.
But when my tennis league started up last Fall I knew I was going to have problems if I didn’t do something to deal with the fact that the 20-somethings I play against had figured out how slow I was to get from one side of the court to the other.
It was after a particularly bad outing at the end of October that I realized the problem was beyond me. I wasn’t going to figure it out by myself. I needed help. I’m 54, and I was gaining about a pound a year for the last 20 years. At 201 pounds the trend showed no signs of changing. My doc at Mayo suggested I had some work to do.
And so I plunked down $3k for a six month training program with Adam Paulson of Snap Fitness. His program consisted of three half-hour fitness trainings a week and counseling on adopting a new lifestyle (not-a-diet, he emphasized).
I started logging everything I ate on MyFitnessPal, and followed his nutritional guidelines – no more than 30g of carbs per meal, five different meals per day, big breakfasts, small dinners, two-ounce glasses of wine instead of six-ounces. You get the idea.
He had me buy new running shoes from a specialty shop that chose a shoe for my particular stride, and soon I was working my way up from quarter-mile runs to doing a quarter-marathons (roughly 6.5 miles).
He also turned me on to Advocare Spark, a multi-level marketing product that he represents.
His fitness trainings emphasized core workouts and flexibility and strengthening my hips and other muscles for the strong-turn required for a good tennis stroke.
The net result of all this is that I’m now down to the low-180s for my weight. My golf handicap dropped by one full stroke. And instead of being at the bottom of the league in tennis which is where I was headed, I lost in a tie-breaker to the eventual league champion.
I’m sleeping better, and my wife says I snore a lot less. She says that’s worth the $3k all by itself.
