Is it worth it? Please help a confused girl

Wow that's alot of money.

Has this trainer discussed diet and nutrition with you, this is the tool you use to ultimately lower your body fat. Try higher protein

& it's a true statement that it's your goals, not your trainers, you need to be kept interested and look forward to your workouts.

Don't let the trainer rip you off. Is 72 sessions his estimate?

Stronglifts is beginner. As long as you are in deficit it is going to shed fat off like you wont believe (i speak from experience btw)

Ditto on the electric impedance. bottom line is are your clothes too big now? that and you have lost 23lb would indicate that the BF% it is showing you is wrong.

You said you started 5x5 already. Assuming you didn't write this in a hospital bed due to injury then i would say you are ready to lift.

Sorry if this sounds a little ranty, the PT is obviously a money grabbing ars3

Get another trainer! The sooner you start lifting heavy, the better!

Check out New Rules of Lifting for Women or Supercharged (doing the latter myself at the moment) has various stages to teach you about lifting, develop strength, has HIIT workouts for weight loss, nutrition etc. and won't cost hundreds of dollars!

From my reading, the only accurate and repeatable BF measurement is an immersion test. Scales are inaccurate, as are caliper measurements (and caliper tests vary depending on who's doing the "pinching"). My electronic scale can give different weights if I try weighing myself several times in a row.

Last time I had a caliper test at my health club was a year after the first and with a new personal trainer. The numbers didn't make sense, so my trainer tried several times until she got the "right" number. Which all says to me, caliper tests and electronic scales are somewhat useful as relative measurements, but don't expect accuracy from them.

I remember being weighed in at 50kg a few years ago. I'm 5ft 5 inches tall. My fitness instructor told me that my BF is 28% and I should try to bring it down further. I always ate healthy, limited my fat intake and was also addicted to exercise so felt the need that I have to burn out every calorie I took in each day!
I'm 10 kgs heavier now but the BF percentage remains the same! I don't understand how it works!

Don't let the trainer define your goals. First, electric inductance as a body fat indicator is notoriously fickle. It can be affected by a whole host of things. My scale at home does the same thing, and overestimates body fat by up to 5%. Second, there is no such thing as too heavy to learn to lift. I would start by lifting only the bar to make sure you have the forms down pat. Maybe find an experienced buddy who can watch you once or twice and critique your form to make sure you lift correctly. I don't know what he means by "not working the right muscles". A good lifting program like stronglifts engages the major muscle groups, so which muscles exaclty are the "wrong" muscles? It sounds like someone trying to railroad you into cardio sessions, and then into lifting sessions, effectively doubling his income. If you're looking to build strength, cardio is not your friend. Heavy lifting is what you need. Your instincts about this offer are correct. Either find a better trainer or do it on your own.


This is dead on.

Gah, please don't pay $484 a month for training! So much good advice above. It really, truly is all about the permanent changes you can make in your life, and it sounds like the trainer is trying to sell to your insecurity rather than finding ways to show you things that you can later do on your own.

First, what are your goals? Do you want to be a power lifter or do you want to tone and sculpt? Second I do not want to disparage the trainer because I do not know this person and maybe they have the education to back it up, I do not know. If you have that mush disposable income then it is up to you but it seems a little pricey to me.

What I do know is that with a little will power and a lot of support from the MFP family, you can do it on your own!!! There are a ton of programs out there that cost a lot less and work. Just look at these forums and all the people who have helped each other with workout plans as well as food.

If you are more comfortable with a trainer well then more power to you, but here are a few popular programs that work to strengthen and tone your body. Tapout XT, Insanity, P90X, and the Beast work out.

If you do not like to workout at home them of course the gym is great and a trainer who knows his/her stuff will help with results.

I remember being weighed in at 50kg a few years ago. I'm 5ft 5 inches tall. My fitness instructor told me that my BF is 28% and I should try to bring it down further. I always ate healthy, limited my fat intake and was also addicted to exercise so felt the need that I have to burn out every calorie I took in each day!
I'm 10 kgs heavier now but the BF percentage remains the same! I don't understand how it works!

Every method of estimating body fat is an estimate, and each technique has its own "error factor". Like HRM calorie estimates, common methods of estimating body fat do not measure all the fat directly. They mainly determine body density, and body density is used to estimate percent body fat. So, from the start, it is an estimate of an estimate.

It takes a lot of time and experience to be able to look at the body fat % number, look at the body in front of you, and interpret the findings correctly. Many people doing these tests have either little experience, or a shallow knowledge of physiology/anthropometrics, or both. So they just read off the number without much thought as to its accuracy or context.

In your case, being 50kg and 28% fat results in a fat-free mass of 79 lbs. That's as low as I have ever seen, and I have only seen that once or twice. That would mean you either had the bone structure of a hummingbird or almost no muscle. Any responsible professional who did that measurement should have immediate had red warning lights going off in their head to double-check the measurement, take a good look at the body in front of them, try to corroborate that number by asking more questions about your weight history, etc. etc. In other words, that number was highly suspect and that should have been immediately obvious to the person doing the test.

For someone to measure someone who weighs 110 lb (50 kg), 65in tall, and 28% fat and say nothing except that the fat % should be reduced, is grossly irresponsible and incompetent, even if the figure was accurate (which it almost certainly wasn't).

That price is absolutely insane. I pay 120/month for 2x/week or 215/month for 4x/week with my personal trainer.
Is the program really worth it? Has he shown you results hes had with other clients to prove it?

what he said about training the muscles you don't use because you sit at the desk all day instead of doing stronglifts, is BS. Also, stronglifts is a beginner programme. it's not "too intermediate" for anyone. It's a beginner programme. The only people that it's likely to be too much for are those who have medical issues or a disability that would make it potentially dangerous or impossible, or are so unfit they can't yet physically do the lifts with a broomstick (in which case they'd work on building up their strength/fitness/flexibility to be able to do that before starting). Anyone who can't yet do the lifts with a 45lb bar, can start lighter either with dumbbells or a lighter bar. Or even just a broomstick until you get the form right to begin with.

The compound lifts in this kind of programme, i.e. squats, DL, bench etc, work the muscles that you don't use due to sitting at a desk all day, and they work them in balance with each other, which gives you a level of functional strength that transfers into other areas, like being able to carry heavy boxes, or be better at sports that require strength, and all sorts. It's ideal for people who sit at a desk all day. You have to start light, learn the form correctly and make sure you've got all that right before you start loading up the bar with heavier and heavier weights, but that's what the programme is and why it's a beginners programme. As to how heavy you end up lifting, that entirely depends on where you start and how quickly your strength improves. At no point are you expected to lift weights that you can't handle. When you get to the point that they're too heavy to do 5x5, you try for 3 workouts and if you still can't do it, you deload, i.e. use less weight for the next workout and work up again.

the main thing I'd caution with stronglifts 5x5 compared to other beginner programmes is that the videos of mehdi doing the lifts don't go into much detail about form, look up Mark Rippetoe's videos on you tube for much more detailed instruction (or, even better buy Rippetoe's book and DVD rather than just little pieces here and there on you tube) and there's also one on you tube of Glenn Pendlay demonstrating the correct form of the Pendlay row which is worth a look. If your goal is to lift heavy then these resources will help you a lot more than a trainer who seems to think that stronglifts 5x5 is an intermediate programme and that doing compound lifts with free weights won't work muscles that don't get used when you sit at a desk all day.

As for body fat percentage, it's quite difficult to get an accurate measurement of it, what I do is use several different methods and look at the bigger picture. If you get a lot of different methods giving you a similar number, then you know it's close to the truth (if not totally spot on), but if you get wildly different numbers from different methods, you know you can't really rely on any of them. If you have a lot of fat to lose, it's actually better just to focus on how many inches your waist is and try to get it below 32 inches (for a female), or some studies suggest less than half your height is better (although that assumes frame size correlates with height when in fact it doesn't necessarily). Once your waist measurement is around those kinds of numbers, then circumference and calliper ways of measuring body fat tend to be more accurate (the formulas were developed on athletic people, and don't necessarily give accurate values for obese people) and you can use those to measure progress instead. Scales tend to be notoriously innaccurate. Also, focus on what you look like in the mirror and how your clothes fit, and how you feel generally. the exact number isn't what's important, you being healthy and happy with your body is what's important.

sad that you would even consider this bs

Way too much money!!!!! Yikes!

Hi everyone,

I am absolutely overwhelmed with happiness to see these responses and I hope to see more.

Here are my goals in order to further what I want to do... I want to lose another 40lbs and I want to tone and sculpt at the same time. I want to do it in a slow and healthy way.

The trainer has a kinesiology degree and he said that the stronglifts program is for more intermediate lifters, not for me (I just started lifting in april). I am an accountant so I sit at a desk all day at work, he said that my back muscles are under developed so I should work on getting my back muscles stronger before I start squatting and rowing and stuff like that.

He said that in the first cycle where we focus on getting the "sleeping" muscles awake, I should expect to lose approx 1-2% body fat and gain 1-2% LBM. This will take approx 2 sessions a week for approx 2 months

In the second cycle, he focuses on getting me into high cardio to really shed body fat so that my muscles can work and show up lol. I should expect to lose approx 12-15% body fat at this time and gain some LBM. This will take approx 3 sessions a week for 2-3 months

Then we start weight training. This is when we will start lifting heavy and cutting back on cardio. He says I should expect to gain muscle and LBM. He knows that by the end, I want to be able to squat 200lbs so that's what we're working towards. This will take approx 6 weeks at 3 sessions a week.

I know my math isn't fully adding up to 72 sessions but the price given is for 72 sessions.

NOW, there are more sessions after this where he wants to do a bit more cardio sessions and then lift even heavier after that. The total would have been 96 sessions (approx a year) but that would cost approx $8,000! I had him reduce to the 72 sessions.

I would be very sceptical of this plan. He says he wants to develop your "sleeping" muscles but is sending you on a high cardio plan which he tells you will allow you to gain LBM. This sounds like BS - it is very unlikely that you will gain LBM without eating above TDEE (which he is unlikely to have you doing given he has suggested you will be losing 12 -15% BF) and lifting heavy.

And then he says you will be able to squat 200lbs within 6 weeks of starting lifting heavy?! This sounds pretty unrealistic, especially if your back muscles are as underdeveloped as your trainer claims. Most people can increase their squat weight by 5lbs per week, 10lbs if they're lucky.