I’ve turned into a gym rat and I like what I see – Winnipeg Free Press
Tracy Mainland
I am getting pumped — literally.
I have been going to the gym pretty regularly. I try to get there at least five days a week — sometimes six. I feel great, am starting to get my shape back and have great energy. I can attribute a lot of this to working out.
And the best part of all: I am losing both inches and pounds.
I weighed in this morning — just past the halfway mark in our challenge — and I am down 11 lbs. My BMI (body mass index) is down two per cent, my fat percentage is down 1.5 per cent and best of all, and I have lost a total of 10.75 inches off my figure.
“That’s almost a foot of fat,” Jolyne Roch, my personal trainer at GoodLife Fitness on Kenaston, pointed out. I seem to be losing fat and gaining muscle. My mom always told me to think of pounds as bricks of butter – that’s 11 bricks of butter. I am OK with the results this far, pretty happy actually.
I met with my doctor (let’s call her Dr. D) a couple of weeks ago and was given the go-ahead to start pushing my workouts. I spoke to her about beginning workouts too early after giving birth to my son, and she said that Jolyne had given me some great advice, listen to your body. Because I have been feeling great, Dr. D said, I should forge on.
Jolyne has been a godsend. She has a degree in kinesiology and applied health from the University of Winnipeg. She has taught me and physically showed me the differences in the types of workouts that a personal trainer would give their clients. She knows her business.
We started off by building what the trainers refer to as a foundation. It’s the building blocks to your weight training/workout. In the first week of our sessions, Jolyne showed me how to create a workout routine specifically tailored for me. There are many exercises that anybody could do, but learning what is right for your specific body is important. I gave birth nine weeks ago, so my body is going to need different exercises than someone else’s. Jolyne pushed — but not too hard — that first week of our sessions and she was still being nice.
The next week, Jolyne and I worked on what she called the build stage, when you start building muscle. This stage involved lifting heavier weights and doing fewer repetitions. I definitely have a lot of building to do — there’s not a whole lot of muscle there to begin with. Jolyne assured me that this is really called the build stage even though I was whining about the burning in my muscles. Apparently, muscles take 48 to 72 hours to heal. After this session, I could definitely feel it three days later, but it was a good pain.
In our third session, Jolyne taught me exercises that are part of the burn phase… and boy did they ever burn. This calls for lifting lighter weights and doing more repetitions. It’s like circuit training — working out very quickly and keeping your heart rate up.
The theory behind the Build and Burn phases is that you will burn more fat if you have more muscle. I figure if it makes you sweat, hurt or burn, it’s got to be good. Each phase can last anywhere from six to eight weeks. One of the benefits of using a personal trainer is they can mix up your routines and phases so that you don’t plateau; stop losing weight or stop building muscle and become discouraged. I plan on seeing a lot more of Jolyne.
I still struggle with the nutrition plans. This part of my fitness challenge takes a lot of work and dedication but mostly organization. I seem to have the workouts going really well, if I could just get the healthy eating down I am sure the pounds would melt off.
tracy.mainland@freepress.mb.ca
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 31, 2010 D3
Once you get past the starting point and begin to see some progress, exercise is easier to stick with.