Idiot personal trainer. (rant)

hiker359

There are *two* ways to create a caloric defiicit. One is through lowering the amount of food you eat, but the other is through exercise. Assuming that your friend doesn't compensate by eating more than she has, working out should be enough to start getting the scale to go down. But, where she isn't being told to even track how much she's eating, it will make things more difficult.

april522

I've had 2 personal trainers in my weight loss adventure, and BOTH (one male and one female) have stressed the importance of eating better choices.

I also wanted to add, that if your friend has a very large amount of weight to lose, this might work for her in the very beginning - and then he may have her work on changing her habits when the weight loss slows.

missprincessgina

My personal trainer says diet is 70% of the picture and is always trying to get me to do his "smack down diet!" Sounds scary!
But he pushes me...last time we did a core circuit and I couldn't laugh or even roll over in bed without my abs screaming at me.

Cranktastic

Butt out.
Let her get going and SMASH things.

rileysowner

I'm irritated that her personal trainer wouldn't even attempt to advise her on how to eat?

While I think the personal trainer is wrong to not say she needs to change here calorie consumption, realize that personal trainers are trained in primarily in exercise not diet. Yes, they have some knowledge, but a lot of it is simply wrong. However, if he thinks exercise will overcome too many calories, he is certainly not a good trainer at all.

LorinaLynn

In addition to what everyone else said, do you really think your friend said to the trainer, "I eat fast food and candy bars all the time. Is that ok?"

LoraF83

PTs generally shouldn't be giving out diet plans.

And, it could be that he had a conversation with your friend that led him to believe she wasn't ready for huge amounts of change just yet, so he didn't feel comfortable telling her about calorie restriction. Maybe he's saving that conversation for a few weeks from now when she's proven that she is committed to make a lifestyle change.

Since you weren't there, and you're only getting her side of the story, I wouldn't be so quick to judge. Chances are, she feels guilty for not being more successful already (especially if you frequently talk about how successful you are) so she's only going to tell you what she thinks you want to hear.

I've been in your friend's shoes - it's never easy to still be the fat one, especially around people who are already successful and/or have made radical lifestyle changes.

miriamwithcats

Many states have no licensure/ certification or even required education for trainers, so if you are in one of those, what they say should be taken with a grain of salt. Joe Blow walking down the street may have more accurate information.

Catjag

You say that her diet is mainly junk food so is there any chance that he did give her some nutritional suggestions but she's not willing to change her eating habits (and chose not to share it with you you got in case you gor on her back about it)?

Took the words right out of my mouth/keys.

Debbe2

The personal trainer may have not discussed food at their first session or may have discussed it but your friend wants to start with things on her terms. Who knows? Play the wait and see game. She will ask you questions soon enough. Remember how difficult this is and how overwhelming we all felt at one time or another. Luckily you're her true constant and friend.

judychicken

Bump

Troll

if her trainer isnt also a nutritionist/sports nutrition counselor, they may not be allowedto give eating advice.

if i hire you to give me a meal plan, dont tell me when to deadlift. if i hire you to help me deadlift, dont tell me how many qpples i can eat a week.

sndiane

I would think the best thing that you can do is be an example. Input your food on MFP in front of her and asked if she would like see were her food counts up to. I have gone to a few personal trainers at gyms, I don't think the job really is to be a nutritionist. They are there to keep you at the gym and show you how to use the equipment.

kandilynn03

The trainer probably shouldn't have told her that the workouts would be enough, but handing out meal plans is probably not in his job description.

But why do you think he's trying to retain clients by keeping them from losing weight? Personally, if I worked out for a month and didn't see results, I would quit. Keeping someone from losing weight to retain clients is bad business practice. I would assume that physical trainers get new clients by word of mouth primarily. If someone looks good and is in good physical shape, they would be more likely to send new clients his way.

AmberJo1984

I would have the same theory as you as to why he's told your friend what he has. That is rediculous. Exercise is great... but, it's not going to do everything.

californiagirl2012

So I have a good friend who's quite overweight, and its because her eating habits are trash. She eats stuff like snickers bars, cookies, pizza, fast food, on a daily basis. Kind of like how I used to eat.

Well, I told her about my efforts to lose weight about a month ago & I guess it inspired her, because recently she told me she got a gym membership & a personal trainer. Excited for her, I told her "Yay! We can be diet & fitness buddies! Did he give you a meal plan?" She replied "Nope, he said the workouts will be enough to make me lose weight!"

Okay. I was already annoyed by that statement. Then, she went on to tell me that her workout was running a mile, and then a variety of intermediate resistance exercises. Something that couldn't possibly burn more than 150 calories. But even if her workout burned 500 calories, that's besides the point. I'm irritated that her personal trainer wouldn't even attempt to advise her on how to eat? Making her rely solely on her workouts to lose weight seems just cruel to me. What she could burn in an hour at the gym, she could eat back at McDonald's within minutes. & I'm not exaggerating, she loves fast food, just like I used to.

I wanted so badly to tell her that the exercise won't be enough and she needs to change her eating habits too to get the best results. But I didn't want to sound like a know it all or seem like I'm pushing my lifestyle on her (because she knows how healthily I eat & she doesn't seem interested in adopting my ways). And I didn't want her to be like "Wow, you think you know more than a professional?" I feel like the reason her trainer didn't explain to her the importance of nutrition is because he wants her to continue coming to the gym everyday, seeing little to no results and ultimately spending more time and money on his services. Idk, maybe I'm just being cynical.

/endrant

I know so many people who have spent thousands on personal trainers and have gotten no where. If they are not dieticians they legally can't give out a diet plan or calories.

You are so right on. It's all about calories. She will learn it the hard way. It really doesn't matter what you eat, of course you want to eat healthy to feel good but fat cells don't care about clean food or not. Even at the login screen in MFP it says "Eat what you want". And it's TRUE.

Exercise is for making your lean body mass pretty (especially lifting weights) for when the fat is gone. Losing fat with no muscle is ugly and cardio alone will not make you pretty. You cannot out exercise too many calories. I learned this the hard way running marathon after marathon and hitting it hard in the gym while still gaining weight decade after decade, thinking that the next marathon (and training for it) would do the trick. All the exercise kept me somewhat healthy, but it came down to less calories for me. It doesn't seem fair to have to eat less and feel a little hunger. It's hard to face the truth of it, very hard. It's not fun. It's drudgery at times. But if you learn to enjoy your smaller amounts of food (necessary to lose weight, since the reason we got fat in the first place was eating too much whether we knew it or not), and rejoice in your victories it can be done.

I had a friend who had a PT 3 years ago and we started this journey at the same time. I succeed and she gained because the PT didn't understand the clients need for less calories and told her to eat more protein to build muscle. Well too many calories whether they are carb, protein, fat, clean, or unclean will make you fat and that is the bottom line. The fat on your body is the end game, not the PT, not the online calorie counter or books and charts.

Sounds like you know what you are doing. Just let your friend learn her lessons the hard way like most of us already did. Most of us floundered before we found success.

ShinyFuture

After having not just 1, but 2 personal trainers try to convince my son that he NEEDED to consume mass amounts of whey AFTER they had been told that he was ALLERGIC

---

"but you MUST, you NEED it or you will NEVER gain any muscle" I'm quite happy to have them never open their mouth about diet/nutrition. (btw, he now trains with a vegan trainer (my son still eats meat), and has never been in better shape).

katevarner

I'm in better shape than my personal trainer. Don't go to him for nutritional advice, and wouldn't listen if he told me that the workouts alone would cause me to reach my goals, but what I want him to do is show me how to do stuff at the gym that I don't know how to do--use the machines and the weights to get my desired fitness results. He's a nice kid, but I'm as muscular as he is, and I'm a 47 yr, old woman.

anemoneprose

One of my PT's pet peeves is clients who lie about what they eat and how much time they are putting in in the gym. PT is there most days, so he knows how much work they are doing, and he can tell if the diet is right just by looking at your progress. I don't know why people feel the need to do this.

It's really an education/information/psychology problem, I think. People forget, misjudge portions*, etc etc... It's only by, in effect, becoming obsessed (which is what most of us here have to learn to be) that you can get near a reasonable approximation of consumption.

I feel so strongly that nutritional information has to be totally standardized, simply formatted, and front and centre on every damn thing. If more people were confronted with the fact that the McDonald's combo they want is 89% of their consumption for the day - at the point of ordering - more of them would think twice.

*Not only that, they're actively misled by food manufacturers, in the way information's presented.

meshashesha2012

changing too much too soon is a good way for people to fail.

i agree with the PT, if your friend keeps up with the exercise she'll eventually come to realize that the way she's eating is not conducive to the workouts and her eating will automatically clean up. trust me, i've tried to fuel 10K runs and weight lifting sessions with fried chicken and sour patch kids and it isnt fun

besides that PT dietary advice can be so incredibly generic that it borders on dangerous. when i relocated and joined a new gym, i got a free consultation with the worst PT ever. luckily i have an athletic background and have been consistently working out for over 20 years so i took his "rules" with a grain of salt. a few of the things he told me to do was lots of medium intensity cardio, avoiding weights, dropping my calories to 1200, avoiding "bad" foods etc.

i saw him several months later and he congratulated me on losing weight. but since he saw me in the weight room doing heavy lifting he was like ohh but you dont want to do that because you'll get bigger. i then told him that i lost weight by doing the opposite of everything he suggested i do :laugh: i mainly do HIIT cardio, heavy weight training, i eat anywhere from 1500-2500 calories a day depending on my hunger level and i still eat popeyes, mcgridles, chocolate, gummi bears etc when i want