Mid-fifties Woman Gets in Shape

I am 56 years old and I have not exercised much in 20 years, and I sit at a desk all week in my job. I have the mixed blessing of good genes, which means I look fitter than I am; and I am in general good health, so I think it’s time to take action before I have any health problems! And because my body shape looks OK, people assume that I work out or exercise regularly. I don’t, and I need to.

So I decided to join a gym, hire a personal trainer, and share the results with you. I want to tell you about the excellent fitness center and trainer, and then I will describe my experiences. I hope to motivate others to take the step of getting in shape. I will be honest about my progress, share my weight and dimensions, and let you know how it goes. I will post exercise and nutrition tips, as well as other fitness information which I learn as I go along. I invite you to post your own experiences in the Comment section below.

My goal is to increase the health of my heart and lungs, improve strength and endurance in order to feel better, and improve muscle tone. I’m sure I will lose a few pounds in the process and look better which is fine, but weight loss is not my main goal.

The fitness center:

The Rosas & Xocolate Boutique Hotel, Restaurant and Spa, on Paseo Montejo at Calle 41, has a small but state-of-the-art fitness center, and it is conveniently located for me, too! I love the hotel…the beautiful restoration of 2 grand old casonas is an architectural marvel, and the sense of peace, elegance, and history is all-encompassing as you walk in the front doors of the hotel. The fitness center is located on the 3rd floor…so you begin your workout by briskly (of course) climbing up two flights of stairs! The fitness center’s facilities include a thorough collection of exercise machines by Life Fitness, high quality machines which work every muscle group and provide several cardio options as well. The environment is luxurious, motivating, and spotlessly clean. The fitness center is available for hotel guests, of course, but memberships or drop-ins are available too. Monthly membership (1500 pesos) includes one massage at the spa, as well as towels and showers, and it is accessible to guests or members at any time of day (1000 pesos without the monthly massage). The shower and dressing room areas are spacious and feel just like being in your very own hotel room at Rosas & Xocolate!

The personal trainer:

Phillip Geerts, a Florida native, has been in Mérida since 2006; after his parents semi-retired here, he came to visit and decided it was the perfect time to leave the small town he was from and move to a new city with new challenges, and begin his career dream of being a personal fitness trainer. He began by working at and then owning a gym, then decided to focus on what he loves: one-on-one personal fitness training. He told me, “I love helping people achieve their fitness goals; in fact, I enjoy seeing their results more than they do sometimes! I am continually learning more about nutrition and how it affects fitness, and I love sharing what I know with my clients.” This is true…Phillip has incredible knowledge and he shares information with you, a little at a time, throughout your workout sessions.

Philip is a certified fitness specialist from one of the most prestigious schools in the industry, ISSA (International Sports Sciences Association). He has a history in sports and is a current competitor of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. He brings a wide range of knowledge obtained from many years of competing, and he has been involved in the training of elite level athletes, fitness competitors, and non-athletes like me. After assessing your goals, current abilities and doing a health evaluation, he will get you on a personalized training program to attain results at a pace which is challenging but healthy, and tailor made just for you. When you train with Phillip, he guarantees that you leave the gym knowing you accomplished what you went in for. He is at Rosas & Xocolate Fitness Center Monday to Friday from 8 am to 3 pm. His personal training services are not included in the gym’s membership fees; his base fee per session (approx. 1 hour) is 150 pesos, with discounts for purchasing 10 or more sessions, or for bringing one to four others into your group. It’s best to make an appointment: phillip@meridatrainer.com and his websites are meridatrainer.com and nolimitathlete.com, full of exercise and nutrition information. Send him an email and ask to be put on his mailing list for weekly tips.

My story:

May 9, 2011:

Today I went to meet Phillip at the Rosas & Xocolate Fitness Center. He provides the fitness center clients with 5 levels of fitness routines that you can do on your own; needless to say I will begin with Level 1!!! But I don’t feel confident about working out on my own just yet; I need some advice and guidance, not to mention some encouragement. So I’m going to begin going three times a week for 3 weeks at a time when Phillip is available; then I should be ready to work out on my own. I will continue to book sessions with Phillip twice a month after that, so he can monitor my progress and help me move to the next levels. After our meeting, he emailed me a very thorough document published by the International Sports Sciences Association. It begins with a medical questionnaire, to be sure you have no health problems which would prevent you from beginning an exercise routine. It has a comprehensive client information section, where you record your height, weight, gender, age and more. Needless to say, the section on exercise habits will be largely blank in my case. It asks lots of lifestyle questions including a daily activity summary from waking up to going to sleep. There is a dietary section too, of course, where you are invited to record everything you eat for a 3-day period, and there is a kitchen makeover questionnaire, as well as dietary information about proteins, carbs, fats, and super-foods. One of the most interesting sections of the document is the readiness for change questionnaire, assessing whether you have what it takes in the attitude department to begin—and continue—an exercise program; and also a social support questionnaire. I printed out the document and will bring some of the forms to my first session next week.

May 16, 2011: Today Phillip reviewed my health and dietary information, then he gave me a summary of how we will work: he has a workout summary printed out for me and will walk me through all the exercises each time he sees me for the first 3 weeks, then I will be able to work on my own. He started me on the treadmill (I have a choice of using either the treadmill, elliptical, or stationary bike) for a 10-minute warmup, at an incline of “3” which is supposedly like walking down the street, at a speed of 3 mph (5 kph). It took me a minute to get the hang of it but then it felt OK. After 10 minutes I was ready to begin the machines. Here is my initial program:

10 minutes (warmup) on treadmill
Machine exercises: all are 2 sets of 15 repetitions, beginning at low weights and gradually increasing:
Leg press
Lat pull-downs
Chest press
Leg curls
Rows
Shoulder press
Bicep curls
Triceps press-down
Abs (there is a machine for this but Phillip suggested I do old-fashioned situps, holding a broom handle horizontally across my thighs)
20 minutes (aerobic exercise) on treadmill plus 5 minutes cool-down
Stretching

Needless to say, I was tired at the end of all this—and I’m terrified I will be in agony tomorrow. But it felt great to get moving and Phillip made it seem easy, explaining about the different types of muscle contractions, making sure I’m breathing properly (exhale on the exertion), and encouraging me to push myself a little bit more.

May 18, 2011: Believe it or not, I have no muscle pain! Either I’m not as un-fit as I thought I was or else Phillip really knows how to get you going gradually. Probably a bit of both. Today he calculated my body composition…in other words what percentage of my body is fat! He did this by doing skin fold measurements with a caliper, of my bicep (7 mm which is just over ¼ inch), tricep (16 mm which is about 6/10 of an inch), subscapular / upper back (13 mm which is about ½ inch), and suprailiac / side of abdomen (about 4/10 of an inch). The results: for my age (56) and weight (122 lbs) my body fat percentage is 32.15%...which puts me just over the—are you ready—OBESE category! According to the American Council on Exercise, body fat is categorized as follows:

CLASSIFICATION    WOMEN (% FAT)    MEN (% FAT)
Essential fat           10-12 %               2-4 %
Athletes                 14-20 %               6-13 %
Fitness                   21-24 %              14-17 %
Acceptable             25-31 %               18-25 %
Obese                    32 % plus             25 % plus

I certainly did not expect to be labeled as an Athlete or Fit, but I assumed I was in the Acceptable category. At 5 ft. 3 in., size 4, and 122 pounds, obese was not a word I would have ever associated with myself! Phillip has given me a 6-to-12-month goal of 22% body fat which means I should in theory weigh less as well, although as I replace fat with muscle my weight may not change dramatically. We shall see!

Needless to say, after this humbling experience, I worked out harder than ever!

May 20, 2011: Today Phillip took my measurements. Here they are:

Weight: 57 kilos (125.4 lbs—must be something wrong with his scale!)
Bicep: 26 cm  (10 and ¼ in.)
Hip: 88 cm (34 and 2/3 in.)
Chest: 86 cm (just under 34 in.)
Waist: 72 cm (28 and 1/3 in.) Note: this was taken at navel level, my waist is smaller a bit higher than that! Really!
Neck: 32 cm (12 and 6/10 in.)
Calf: 35.5 cm (14 in.)
Thigh: 42.5 cm (16 and ¾ in.) Everyone has a body part they would like to change. This is mine.

June 3, 2011: At the end of three weeks, I feel just wonderful. I have been eating from the list of super-foods and actually looking forward to my workouts. Over these 3 weeks Phillip has moved my weights up little by little, and what was almost impossible for me the first week is now a piece of cake. In one more week I will be moving up to Level 2! I can’t believe it! I will be on my own for the next 2 weeks, and Phillip has provided me with a detailed list of what to do for each of the remaining 3 sessions at Level 1, and what to do the following week at Level 2, when I will be changing from 2 sets of 15 reps for each machine to 3 sets of 12 reps, with bigger weights. And no Phillip there to encourage me! He has added some more warmup exercises such as squats, kicks and lunges, and my situps have advanced to a variety where I hold my arms vertically and my legs are straight with heels flat on the floor. You can really feel the internal abs getting a workout.

But the best part of all: when I look in the mirror, I can see a tiny improvement in muscle tone.

DID YOU KNOW…that when you do your cardio exercise at 65% of your maximum heart rate, you are burning fat, and at 80% you are in your aerobic zone? The typical healthy resting heart rate in adults is 60–80 bpm (beats per minute). The maximum heart rate is the highest heart rate an individual can safely achieve through exercise stress, and depends on age. The most common formula for your maximum heart rate is 220 minus your age. So in my case, 220 minus 56 = 164. If I want to burn fat, I walk on the treadmill at 65% of 164, which is 107 bpm. If I want to be in the aerobic zone, which is what Phillip has instructed me, I walk on the treadmill at 80% of 164, which is 131 bpm. In our photo gallery, along with the photos of Phillip and the gym, I have attached a helpful chart, with the widely used Fox and Haskell formula.

June 8, 2011: Today was my second session without Phillip. I can honestly say I have done EVERYTHING he told me to do! And here is a summary of my cardio workout: I am supposed to do 20 minutes of cardio plus cool-down, on the treadmill, after working on the machines, but I had to do it for less time so I would not be late for work. I did 3 minutes at an incline of 3 and a speed of 5.5 kph, then 12 minutes at 6 kph, then a 3 minute cool-down. I reached a heart rate of 135 bpm, burned 78 calories, climbed 43 meters, and walked a distance of 1.68 km. What a great way to start the day!

June 17, 2011: I'M NOT OBESE ANY MORE!!! After 5 weeks of exercise, my total body fat is 30.32%, so I am now ACCEPTABLE. This means I have lost nearly 2% body fat. Phillip is pleased and of course, so am I!!! But I have to say that the new heavier weights on the machines are tough. I won't see Phillip again for a month, so my goal is to fulfill the schedule he has given me, which gradually increases the weights...and of course now I'm doing 12 reps for 3 sets. Whew!!!

DID YOU KNOW...that you can get a better workout if you do your exercises in a method known as CIRCUIT TRAINING? What this means, specifically in my case, is that instead of doing 3 consecutive sets of leg presses, then 3 consecutive sets of lat pull-downs, (with a full minute of resting between each set in order to rest the muscle), instead I will do the complete circuit--one set only--of each weight, then repeat the complete circuit a second and then a third time. This means I don't have to rest between exercises because I am switching to a completely different set of muscles for each exercise. So that means I am moving pretty quickly...and getting an aerobic workout at the same time as a result. Studies show that circuit training helps women to achieve their goals and maintain them longer than other forms of exercise or diet.

July 20, 2011: I have not lost any weight, which was never my goal anyway...but I have lost another 1% body fat! This is great news. I have been working at the second level, and will continue to do that, while increasing the weights, until my next session with Phillip in August. At that time he is going to move me up to Level 3, which will mean I leave my machine weights behind and switch to dumbbells. That sounds scary!

DID YOU KNOW...that when you exercise, you are NOT converting fat into muscle. In fact, it is impossible to convert fat into muscle and vice versa. Fat is fat, and you can lose it ONLY if you burn more calories each day than you consume, which you can achieve either by dieting, exercising, or both. Muscle, on the other hand, grows when you exercise, and shrinks when you don't. So if your body fat percentage is dropping, it is because you are either increasing muscle, losing fat, or both. In my case, it is probably both: I am increasing muscle from the work with the weight machines, and am burning fat from the increased activity; I have not changed my diet much, which means I am losing fat from the increased calories burned from the exercise, rather than from dieting. The reason my weight has not changed is because of the increase in muscle weight compensating for the loss in fat weight.

Aug. 18, 2011: I am now beginning to work at Level 3, as follows, mostly with dumbbells, as I leave the machine weights behind (weights shown are in each hand): Dumbbell squats, 25 pounds; lat pull-downs (on the machine as before); dumbbell chest press, 15 pounds; lunges, 20 pounds; dumbbell rows, 10 pounds; dumbbell shoulder press, 10 pounds; dumbbell bicep curls, 15 pounds; dumbbell triceps extension, 15 pounds (only one weight held by both hands on this one). In addition to the situps holding a weight (now up to 15 pounds) I am doing the Plank: lie down on your stomach, lift yourself up to put weight only on your forearms flat to the floor and your toes...hold for 60 seconds...believe me, this sounds MUCH easier than it is!!! Working with dumbbells improves balance, as your body is controlling the position of the weights rather than the weights being fixed in place by the machine. At first it feels a bit wobbly, but this will improve over time.

DID YOU KNOW...that olive oil is not as healthy to cook with as it is to consume cold? According to Philip's website No Limit Athlete, "All types of olive oils contain large amounts of monounsaturated fats. In fact 70-80% of total fat found in olive oil is monounsaturated. The problem with heating oils with high amounts of MUFAs is they have low smoking points and cannot withstand a large amount of heat. Heats greater than 200-250°F (93-121°C) damage can begin to occur." He suggests cooking with grape seed oil, peanut oil, or coconut oil instead. Click here for the whole story!

Aug. 30, 2011: My body fat has gone down another 1% to 28% !!! So from May 18 to Aug. 30, in just over 3 months, I have lost 4% body fat. WONDERFUL!!! This is SOOO motivating!