Personal Training Round Two

Yesterday I had my initial consultation with my new personal trainer. We met for over an hour; and we talked. That’s it. I didn’t sweat one bit. And it was awesome! Here’s a rundown of the meeting:

Personal History:
We spent a few minutes at the beginning introducing ourselves and talking about where I’ve been. I explained to him that I weight 228 after college, dropped to 178 and then steadily rose back to 221 pounds. Next I mentioned about how I’ve used Get Fit Slowly to slowly drop back down to 181 over the next two years.

Activity Level:
Part of the conversation revolved around my activity level. I felt that he really wanted to know what I’ve been up to and where I wanted to be. I explained to him that I’ve been running for 5 hours per week and that my current goals revolve around completing my marathon in under 4 hours.

Nutrition Analysis:
Next, we went over what I’ve been eating and some of the concerns I have with my diet. We actually wrote down a typical day’s food intake for me, analyzed it in terms of calories and macronutrients. Then we came up with a new plan based on some of his recommendations. I left the office with a better handle on nutrition and some suggestions for helping me actually achieve eating a better balanced diet.

Body Anylysis & Goals:
Next came the fun part of the morning. He put me on the scale…181.2 pounds. Then he got out the skin fold calipers and measured my body fat%…24.1% I was a little upset with this number because my new scale has me way down to 18.9% That’s a big difference between the two measurements. I knew the two methods of determining fat content would be different, but I was hoping for the number to be around 22%.

After the measurements, I told him my goals. And actually, we revised them a bit based on our conversations to that point. So now, I’m revising them a bit for you all as well. I now want my body fat to be below 15% and my weight to be 170 pounds.

Plan of Action:
After about an hour of discussion, we came up with a plan of action to get where I want to be. Nutritionally, I’m supposed to keep my intake around the same but I’m supposed to really work on the composition of what I’m eating. We came up with some strategies to get my carbohydrate intake down to around 40%, my protein up to about 30% and my fat to stay the same at 30%.
Physically, I’m supposed to incorporate weight training 3 times per week to help me build muscle and to keep my metabolism revved up for longer periods of time.

So for the next six weeks, we’re meeting on Monday and Friday mornings to workout. I’m supposed to find one more day during the week where I can repeat the workout from Monday.

I’m really excited about getting back in the gym. I’m also very optimistic about the results that I can expect out of my weight training when my primary goal is to get this marathon accomplished. I was very forthcoming with my trainer about my goals and he seemed to understand where I was coming from. So if on some weeks, I only get two strength training workouts in, I’m OK with that.

I think that today’s meeting went really well. I’m ready to gain muscle, get stronger, more flexible, decrease my body fat, eat more nutritiously, and run a four-hour marathon.

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