CoachMeFit Blog

By: Brian Dokter

Manager, CoachMeFit Grand Rapids

“Functional training” is considered training that prepares the body for the actual demands of every day life. Well, when your everyday life is about to get more extreme, then your idea of “functional training” should follow. In Grand Rapids we recently adjusted the training of one of our clients to meet the needs of a missions trip he is heading on, and it is getting very “functional”.

Our client is heading on a trip to Burma to live the the life of a photo journalist that he supports. He is going to be hiking in the Burmese mountains to provide aid to locals, as well as to help his friend who through the lens of his camera, exposes the genocide that takes place there.  Needless to say, but there are certain people who don’t appreciate his presence, and there are times that swift action and movement is necessary, and it has to be done in very extreme mountain conditions, with 40-50 lbs. on your shoulders.

Since starting with CoachMeFit, our client has lost 30lbs and has improved his overall fitness greatly, but now his life could depend on that level of fitness. Let’s just say he has an increased level of motivation. And we are training him in conditions as similar to the demands he is about to endure.

Every warm up and cool-down periods on the treadmill and elliptical is done with a backpack with 35lbs. in it. He has been doing many single leg exercises to help improve his balance and strength. We also do lots of negative work on the stairs to simulate downhill climbing. Our cardio sessions on the treadmill involve the backpack with large amounts of weight and steep hill climbs.

He has loved the change and variety in his day to day workouts, but he really enjoys the confidence and strength he is building knowing that he will be prepared for the demands of his coming missions trip.

By: Catherine Munaco

Owner, CoachMeFit West Bloomfield

A few months back, Robin, the mother of my old college roommate called me to ask me a few questions about diet and exercise for herself and her husband. “Mark and I are going to go on a diet!” She explained giddily. My response was less enthusiastic, but she assured me that Mark was a “meat and potato guy” who was “simply getting dragged along for the ride”. I had heard it before, but I gave her my advice on cardio routines and we were on our way.

Less than six weeks later, Robin called me in a fury to explain Mark’s “diet”. “He weighs himself in the morning,” she lamented, “and if he weighs more than he did the day before, he skips his morning muffin. If he weighs less, he eats his muffin.” She paused before exploding: “HE’S LOST 15 POUNDS! I’VE LOST ONE AND I NEVER EAT THE MUFFIN!”

If this were a rare occurrence, women wouldn’t have such a disdain for watching a male significant other drop 5 pounds in a week by eliminating his midnight snack. But instead, woman after woman has returned disgruntled after attempting to diet with her man.

So why is it so easy for men to drop weight compared to women? The easiest answer is the most annoying one: men’s body compositions are simply designed to burn more calories. Anthropologically speaking, men were the hunters and the protectors. Women had to bear children (which also means fatty breast and hip tissue). As we evolved, men continued to have more muscle mass than women in part because the males that survived had higher muscle masses and the strength to kill for food or protection, and the females that survived had the fat stores to carry healthy children to term. Because muscle is an active tissue, it burns more calories at rest than fat. Men have substantially more muscle than women, both because they have a lower percentage of body fat than women (A healthy level of 8-19% for males compared to 21-33% for women) and also more mass in general. In analyzing body fat, a body is generally divided into two groups: Fat mass percentage (FM) and fat free mass (FFM), which includes muscles, bones, and organs. If we compare two individuals with healthy body fat percentages (a 135 lb woman with a FM of 27% and a 165 lb male with a FM of 14%) the female would have a FFM of 98.55 pounds and the male would have a FFM of 141.9 lbs. That’s roughly 43 more pounds of active tissue for the male. It’s no wonder that skipping a morning muffin can still lead to weight loss when a man’s body will almost always have higher rate of calorie burn at rest (also called resting metabolic rate, or RMR). Whether it’s running outside or watching a movie, women simply do not burn as many calories as men.

To be fair, men have a similar frustration when they reach 30 and realize they can’t eat like they did in college. I call this the plight of the 30-year-old male. Part of this is because careers and families make it more difficult for a man to regularly exercise like he did in his college bachelorhood days. But even more significant is the fact that testosterone levels first start to drop at 30 in males. In some men, testosterone can drop by as much as 2% every year after 30. Among other things, testosterone is responsible for muscle development. (The significantly lower level of testosterone in females is another reason female muscle masses are lower than in males. Sigh.) After puberty and throughout the 20s, when testosterone levels are highest and males see their peak muscle mass, an average man can practically eat whatever he wants and not gain significant weight, as long as he remains relatively active. At this age, men are caloric vacuums. Their bodies can literally burn calories while they sleep. But when 30 hits and testosterone levels drop along with activity levels, men who are conscious of their weight often find themselves nibbling on carrots and whole bran cereal right along with the women in their lives.

The bottom line is that many factors contribute to muscle mass in both females and males. Muscle mass is directly linked to resting metabolic rate, or calories burned at rest. RMR is considered the baseline for measuring caloric expenditure. The intensity level of an activity can be measured by how much greater it is than RMR. If an activity burns twice as many calories than RMR, it is considered to be 2MR, if it burns 9 times more calories per minute, its considered 9MR, and so on. It makes sense, then, that a higher muscle mass leads to a higher RMR, and also a higher caloric expenditure in any activity. There’s not much a woman can do to increase her testosterone levels to those of a man, nor should she want to (a plethora of complications could arise). But women can still fight the weight loss battle more effectively by increasing their own muscle mass. And by staying away from diets with men and muffins.

Amy and Shellay from NBC’s “Biggest Loser” were interviewed by WDIV this week along with their personal trainer, CoachMeFit Owner Derek DiGiovanni. 

Their weight loss since being eliminated from the show has been truly remarkable and they attribute much of this accomplishment to Derek’s help.  Watch the clip above to hear them talk about just how far they’ve come.

“Biggest Loser” contestants Amy and Shellay are clients at the CoachMeFit studio in Birmingham, MI.  They work out with the owners of the studio, Derek and Kerrie DiGiovanni.

“Biggest Loser” airs Tuesday’s at 8:00pm on NBC.

Last night, Amy was voted off the show. Eager to stay at the ranch and continue the rugged regime, she would now have to go it alone. Instead of a TV star for a trainer she would look to Derek at the local CoachMeFit to “kick butt.” It’s working. Her weight continues to go down.

Amy has some advice for people who are seriously over weight but don’t have the luxury of a stay at the Biggest Loser ranch to help them.

1) Make exercise a priority every day. If there is something else you want to do, tell yourself that you can’t do it until you do your cardio, or weights.

2) Ideally find a “workout buddy” who is committed to exercising with you regularly. Of course, a personal trainer is your best support system.

3) Diets alone don’t work.

4) Realize that many physical symptoms—aching legs and feet, difficulty breathing, and a host of medical problems—are the result of your weight, and you can be free of them.

5) Set small attainable goals, achieve them, and set more small goals. If you never exercise, don’t start with a goal of working out every day. You’re likely to fail, and give up completely.

This week’s pay-off for Amy was going to lunch with friends she used to work with and finding that many didn’t recognize her. Priceless.

In case you are curious … Amy and Shellay won’t be indulging in a 4,000-calorie (the average intake of an adult at Thanksgiving dinner) eating frenzy this Thanksgiving. They are eating turkey breast, salad, and cauliflower mashed “potatoes.”

“Biggest Loser” contestants Amy and Shellay are clients at the CoachMeFit studio in Birmingham, MI.  They work out with the owners of the studio, Derek and Kerrie DiGiovanni.

“Biggest Loser” airs Tuesday’s at 8:00pm on NBC.

Nothing celebrates losing a lot of weight like selling all your “fat” clothes in a garage sale. That’s exactly what Amy and Shellay did, vowing that they are so over being overweight.

Amy and her Personal Trainer, Derek

If Amy reaches her goal, she’ll be wearing a size-10 dress for the season finale. On Tuesday’s program Amy beat out all other contestants in terms of the greatest percentage of weight loss in a week. She lost 8 lbs for a total weight loss of 66 lbs.

Shellay is on-track to don a size 6 little black dress when she returns. Shellay admits that exercising for hours every day is getting tougher. Boredom, burnout … that’s inevitable when all day, every day for the last six months you’ve been counting every calorie you burn. It’s her personal training sessions that keep her enthused. “I always feel really good after working out with Derek. Sure, I’m exhausted, but my stress and any negative feelings are gone.”

Shellay believes that if you exercise infrequently, you can convince yourself you’ve reached your limit although your body is far from it. But with a good personal trainer you find you are capable of more than you imagined. “CoachMeFit is full of positive energy. I cross paths week after week with the same people and can see their progress.

I would tell anyone who is struggling with losing weight to in invest in personal training, even a few times a month. It would be hard to put a price on the benefits.”

Everybody has different reasons for working out. Some of our clients want to lose inches and pounds, some want to improve their 5k times, and some simply want help improving the quality of their lives. Here at the CoachMeFit studio in Grand Rapids, we have seen success in many ways for our clients, and recently, we helped one of them enjoy the trip of her lifetime.

Ann Marie came to us looking to lose a few inches and pounds, but as we began to achieve those milestones, her goals began to change. Ann Marie scheduled a trip to Italy with her sister. This trip was going to cover a lot of beautiful territory they had wanted to visit their whole lives, and it was going to cover that ground mostly on foot. Ann Marie was worried that given her age and weight she would not be able to keep up with the pack or see all of the things she wanted to. We trained for several weeks with her trip to Italy specifically in mind. We focused on strength training with her lower body and maintaining it’s flexibility, as well as getting her heart and lungs ready for the cardiovascular demands.

Ann Marie returned home from her trip to Italy with a large smile on her face when she walked back in to the studio to resume her training. She was able to not only keep up with the pack, but said she often found herself waiting for them. Not once was she tired or sore and not once did her health keep her from seeing anything she wanted to see. She was very thankful that she put in the physical work that was necessary for her trip, and she was glad that her trainer at CoachMefit was able to help her do so.

“Biggest Loser” contestants Amy and Shellay are clients at the CoachMeFit studio in Birmingham, MI.  They work out with the owners of the studio, Derek and Kerrie DiGiovanni.

“Biggest Loser” airs Tuesday’s at 8:00pm on NBC.

“I’ll never go back to that life,” says a determined Amy referring to the years when she never, ever exercised, dieted off and on, and gained weight year after year. “I knew very little about the Biggest Loser right up to the day I tried out for the show. I did know that if I was ever going to change my life, this was my chance.”

Living on the Biggest Loser’s ranch where she learned the importance of exercise and how to eat right transformed Amy. By Tuesday’s show Amy had lost 58 pounds — the equivalent of 24% of her body weight. And the hard work continues. At CoachMeFit she warms up, powers through a 45 – 60 minute cardio workout on a combination of elliptical, treadmill and bike and then completes a 45 – 50 minute weight circuit and cools down. She experiences some muscle soreness after weight training, but it doesn’t bother her. “It’s a sign I worked hard.” The weight training builds muscle tone to add firmness to her smaller shape. The rest of her training is on her own in the form of gym workouts and hours of walking.

Training with Derek or Kerrie helps Amy feel grounded and committed. Like her workouts at the Biggest Loser ranch, the sessions are serious business. Her trainers know that Amy is in it to win.

“Biggest Loser” contestants Amy and Shellay are clients at the CoachMeFit studio in Birmingham, MI.  They work out with the Owners of the studio, Derek and Kerrie DiGiovanni.

“Biggest Loser” airs Tuesday’s at 8:00pm on NBC.

“The energy goes right out of me when I don’t exercise. That’s a real eye-opener,” Shellay observed after a family funeral and other obligations made it impossible to keep up her intense exercise regimen this past week. Contrary to how she might have expected to feel after dramatically cutting down on exercise, Shellay admits she “felt exhausted.”

Amy’s hard work is really paying off. When Biggest Loser last aired two weeks ago, she ranked number one – she had lost the greatest percentage of body fat of any of the contestants. From Shellay’s perspective, this has made as big a change in her attitude as in her body. “She is so much happier now.”

Shellay has mentioned before that she tried all kinds of diets from the time she was a teenager. It wasn’t until Biggest Loser that she realized the role of exercise in losing weight. If you doubt the extremes to which she went to lose weight, check this out — Shellay, her mom, aunt, and cousin all tried a controversial diet that involved receiving injections of animal placenta. Imagine that even as a teenager, Shellay was desperately searching for a way to lose weight, just like her mom.

By: Jen Boyce, Manager, CoachMeFit Ann Arbor, MI

Keeping fit during pregnancy is vital for your (and your baby’s) health and well-being. It improves blood flow to the muscles and also helps your body to use glucose more effectively, which helps reduce the risk of diabetes. James Clapp, M.D, states that pregnant women who exercised delivered a healthier baby with a stronger fetal heart rate. Even more compelling is the fact that of the women who exercised, time spent in labor was shortened by about a third, with 65% of the women delivering in four hours or less.  Start slowly. Doing 20-30 minutes a day, up to five times a week is adequate.  The following exercises are especially good to get your body ready for labor.

KEGEL EXERCISES
Start with Kegel exercises, which help tone your pelvic floor muscles. Simply tighten your pelvic muscles as if you’re stopping your stream of urine. Try it for five seconds at a time, four or five times in a row. Work up to keeping the muscles contracted for 10 seconds at a time, relaxing for 10 seconds between contractions. Aim for at least three sets of 10 repetitions a day. You can do Kegels while standing, sitting or lying down.

TAILOR SITTING OR BUTTERFLY STRETCH
The tailor sitting position stretches the muscles in your thighs and pelvis. It also improves your posture, keeps your pelvic joints flexible and increases blood flow to your lower body.
To practice tailor sitting, sit on the floor with your back straight. Bring the bottoms of your feet together, pull your heels toward your groin and gently drop your knees. You’ll feel a stretch in your inner thighs. Try tailor sitting anytime you’re able to sit on the floor.

If it’s difficult to sit in this position, use a wall to support your back or place cushions under each thigh. Remember to keep your back straight.

LOW BACK STRETCH
Stretching the muscles in your lower back can help relieve backaches during pregnancy and labor.
Rest on your hands and knees with your head in line with your back. Pull in your stomach, rounding your back slightly. Hold the position for several seconds. Then relax your stomach and back, keeping your back as flat as possible. Don’t let your back sag. Repeat several times. Gradually work up to 10 repetitions.

PELVIC TILT
You can also stretch the muscles in your lower back while standing. Lay on the floor face up, your feet about shoulder-width apart. Then push your pelvis upward. Repeat several times.

SQUAT
Squatting during labor — even for short amounts of time — helps open your pelvic outlet and allows more room for your baby to descend. Practicing squats now will make it easier to squat during labor.
Stand with your feet slightly greater than shoulder-width apart and your toes pointing forward. Slowly descend, bending through the hips, knees and ankles, making sure your shoulders stay up. Keep your heels flat on the floor. Stop when your knees reach a 90-degree angle. If you can’t bend your knees to a 90-degree angle, simply go as low as you can. Then return to the starting position. Repeat several times. Gradually work up to 10 repetitions.

BALL SQUATS
For a twist on standard squats, try these;
Stand up straight with a fitness ball behind the small of your back and against the wall, your feet about shoulder-width apart. Slide down the wall until you’re in a sitting position, then slowly slide back up. Repeat several times. Gradually work up to 10 repetitions.

SWIMMING
Swimming is good to take the weight of your belly off of your back and legs.

A COUPLE OF TIPS TO FOLLOW:
-Monitor your heart rate and breathing. As a general rule, your heart rate should not exceed 140 beats/minute.
-In the last trimester, avoid ballistic movements, such as jumping or running.
-Avoid exercising at extreme altitude or in hot, humid environments.
-Most of all, drink plenty of water.

The Biggest Loser airs Tuesdays at 8pm on NBC

Shellay’s celebrity status went up several notches with her live appearance on the Today Show last Tuesday. “I live in my workout clothes. Wearing Spandex is my signature,” she confirmed to a nationwide audience. Her “before” photo showed the dramatic difference the loss of 60 lbs has made in her body.

Shellay admits that her lifelong failure to lose weight led to an overall feeling of failure. She couldn’t muster the physical energy and confidence to work outside her home. Her husband encouraged her to “just get moving.” Now her “head is spinning” with ideas of what she wants to do with her life after December. In trying diet after diet, she learned what eating habits to adopt to lose weight. It was the role of exercise that surprised her.

There are greater challenges to losing weight at 51, than at 31. You’ve been living with the physical consequences of being overweight for a longer amount of time, and as a woman, you’re dealing with menopause. But Shellay is overwhelming proof that if you are determined you can transform yourself regardless of age. For Shellay, support from her husband, daughter, and personal trainers is keeping her on track without a weekly weigh-in in front of the cameras.