•    Issues:

Low cardio capacity

muscular weakness

moderate balance instability

excess body weight and body fat

poor nutrition choices

•Observations:

Leslie is a mid 40’s working Mom with 2 children and added 35-40 pounds of body weight and excess body fat to her frame from years of indulgence in poor food choices, eating habits, meal timing, and alcohol consumption.   Leslie was once a very fit person but has chosen a relentlessly busy schedule where her work and children come before her own well being.  In addition, her children are leading her food choices, so she states, and their school and extracurricular schedules’ leave her little time to food shop, prep, and cook.   With one of the most aggressive social calendars I have ever encountered, eating out of her home nightly is routine, breakfast is a cup of tea, and lunch is whatever everyone in the office gets after starving all morning.  Dinner out after the kids activities and wine later in the evening with her husband all lead to weight gain, poor conditioning, poor overall well being and feeling low energy.  This is all compounded by poor sleep levels, partly due to the routine alcohol consumption.  The general issue is too many calories all at the wrong times of the day.  This should be an easy case:  I would be helping Leslie carve out some time for herself, help her plan her meals, shop with Leslie if needed, and then execute the plan. 

•Plan:

Improve cardio fitness and accelerate weight loss using aerobic cardiovascular exercise that includes a large flight of stairs, a rowing machine, and an elliptical machine.

Improve muscular weakness using strength training.  Use of small free weights, body weight exercise and rubber resistance tubing, and medicine balls. 

Basic balance training that is suitable for anyone.

Focus on a 20 lb. weight loss in 10 lb. increments. 

Assess, monitor and maintain consistent nutrition by providing caloric needs assessment, full meal plan based on likes/dislikes, clean out bad foods from the home, and offer shopping services to assist in the re-education process for nutrition. 

•Results:

In 12 weeks  Leslie, with my help, lost 8 pounds:

Cardio:  Increase from 3 minutes to 15 minutes of nonstop aerobic stair climbing.  20 minutes combined cardio capacity between elliptical and rowing machine also achieved with more capacity available.

Strength:  total body strength and muscular endurance increased significantly.  Unspecified lean mass was added in these 12 weeks.

Balance:  total basic balance achieved and some cardio boxing moves requiring balance for punching utilized to meet 2 goals at once

Nutrition:  Without question, this client received the most nutrition support and somehow failed to make any lasting changes in her lifestyle.  The eating out did not stop.  The wine intake abated for the majority of our time together but when there was an evening it was consumed, it was to excess and undid all the hard work and caloric restriction throughout the day.  The children still seemed to eat poorly and were allowed to eat whatever they chose; which was usually too much food and poor in nutrition quality.  The results in this category are dismal at best. 

•Summary:  Leslie proved what I have always known to be true.  Even with a great workout plan, high motivation to do activity, and a great improvement of internal conditioning, weight loss, and lean mass gain; body fat reduction will not occur without a proper diet.  Leslie made huge improvements in her fitness.  Great strength gains.  Gains in lean mass.  Clearly our time together was not a failure.  However; the results for her hard work physically were all but wasted with poor overall nutrition.  Leslie did “try” quite a bit to get the nutrition right.  I almost sensed that there was a want to be able to eat clean and healthy, but an unwillingness to let go of the emotional attachment to food and the convenience that fast food or take out dinners brought.  This was not a case of economics either.    Healthy choices could have been made; even though they are more expensive.  But junk food had an evil way of keeping its claws in you.  It’s “fun” to eat take out foods and the processed sugar and salt are highly addictive!  We never did get to go shopping as it seemed every week there was some breakdown in nutrition reported to me. 

I would love to say that every client of mine is a happy ending.  Leslie was not the best of all endings.  If you reviewed all of the above cases, you could interpret that Leslie was not the only female drinking wine and adding unneeded calories to her diet.  Oh no.  The other clients above were willing to make a lifestyle change to meet a physical goal.  They made the right choices and executed.  They gave themselves permission to choose the best path for their success.  Having a game plan can make that happen.  Being accountable to someone can make success even more attainable.  But you have to be accountable.  “I know” gets nothing done.  To state my last point:  If you want it bad enough, you will do what it takes to achieve the goal.  No excuses, no reasons, no nothing.   Just get it done. 

Case Study 4:  Ms. Leslie “Yeah, I know”