Food Snob on a Diet: The Ugly Truth & Extreme Fitness (the scam)

Today I went to the gym to get a fitness assessment. I am an Extreme Fitness member and i just found out that I had the right to have a fitness assessment every month. The goal of this exercise is to meet with a trainer who will get you to step in a machine that will read your weight and give you the percentages of fat and lean mass you have in your body. Then the trainer will ask about your goals, show you what you need to do in order to reach your goal, then finally he/she will show you that you should get a personal trainer and a nutritionist to achieve that goal. The issue is that once upon a time I had agreed in having a trainer within Extreme Fitness and my experience was less than pleasant. Bottom line is that after I signed the $1000 contract, no one at the gym never ever followed up with me to know if my sessions were going well or if I was happy with the services, or if I was having any results. Today when I went to the fitness assessment, when one of the trainers tried to pitch the " I really should get a personal trainer", I was very honest to her and said that I had a very bad experience with a trainer at the gym and as the gym never cared about my customer experience I did not trust the gym. She decided to talk to a manager to see if he could do anything about the situation. I met with the manager and explain the situation (I was probably not in my best behaviour as I was telling him politely that the whole thing a a rip-off), and at the end I asked him if there was anything that he could do for me so they could regain my trust and the answer was "no answer" He did not propose anything but took his time to say that I should have contacted a manager during the period I had a trainer not after my sessions were over, he also told me that I could have paid sessions monthly instead of signing a big lump-sum contract. My conclusion with the whole thing is Extreme Fitness is a nice gym to go and do your workout, they have some good Pilates classes, spinning sessions but their main goal is to sell you personal trainer and nutritionist services, and good luck if you have any benefit or not from it.

So, here comes the "ugly truth", even though my measurements were not taken as they did not have a single tape available at that huge gym, my lovely trainer(not being sarcastic this time around) was able to get my weight and the percentages of fat and lean mass.

The unexpected news was that my weight (139lbs) is actually normal for someone who has my age and height. The bad news is that 32% of my body composition is fat, and the level is so high that I could have health issues if I maintain or increase it. According to the trainer, women with a healthy percentage of fat have the levels between 10 to 20. She advised me to be on 15% as my goal was just to lose weight and become toned. To get to that level I should lose 23 pounds of fat. That will be a challenge a bit bigger than I anticipated but it is all part of life and I will take one day at time.

Diet wise, I am doing good. Today i completed the 5th day of the diet and in average I have been eating 1093 calories per day, and this is extremely low compared to the amount of energy I am burning per day. In average the net calories are of - 852 calories. This is the difference between what I ate and what I have burned. That said, if I keep my motivation in the same levels and continue in the rhythm, it should take me 13.5 weeks to get to my goal.

Eating today was hard during the late afternoon and early evening because I had the gym appointment at 7PM and I did not bring my dinner to work. That said I had to resort to trail mix and for a tiny 1/4 cup I used 145 cal from my calories budget. Not a very good deal but it was that or starvation and I was pretty hungry by 6PM.

At breakfast I had scrambled eggs with ham, yellow pepper, and a laughing cow triangle, a small salad with mixed greens, cherry tomatoes and feta cheese, a brazil nut, and coffee with milk.

I had half of a pear for my morning snack.

For lunch I had half of the portion of beef with okra, and a salad with mixed greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, and buffalo mozzarella. I also had dessert today! Two tiny squares of camino 71% chocolate.

In the afternoon I had a meeting that ended 5 minutes earlier than expected and then I run to the Tim Hortons and had a small coffee with 2% milk and splenda. Later on I had a handful of blackberries, and when I was about to head to the gym I had the delicious trail mix.