Crawley Personal Trainer, The Myth of Cost

I apologise if some of the words and tone of this post are different and more superficially passionate than others, the words are meant to provoke your thinking and ask questions to challenge the habits you have formed.

If you see yourself in any of this, I won't judge you negatively, whether or not you become a client. Do you seriously think that most of us have not been here at some point?

OK, I am not even going to deal with the confrontational question “how much is your health worth to you?”

We will come to that later.

What if I were able to demonstrate to you that a fortnightly session with your Crawley Personal Trainer were to SAVE YOU MONEY RATHER THAN COST YOU ANYTHING?

Go back to the questions in my last Crawley Personal Trainer blog post:

• Do I have fit and healthy friends?

• Do I eat healthily when I eat out, or at home?

• Do I go to the pub more often than I used to when I was healthier?

• Have I stopped playing sport/swimming/walking/gardening etc.?

• Do I drink more alcohol than I used to?

• Do I snack unhealthily?

Do I have fit and healthy friends?

And to demonstrate to you how living sensibly and for want of a better expression, healthily, as you will be doing once you have got your “reasons why” sorted, then your healthy friends won't want to go to Burger/Chicken Bars/Pizza Restaurants/out on the lash/greasy spoons- stands to reason doesn't it?

Do I eat healthily?

Check the answer above for eating out, however at home, avoiding ready meals with high salt and useless calorie contents washed down with cheap alcohol, feeling bloated and sluggish as consequence not only that night, but the next day too- and then seeking out the next sugar/fat fix to temporarily refix your blood sugar levels has to save cash doesn't it?

What are your pub habits?

As for the pub, being one of a group and indulging in friendship rounds, in other words, they bought you a drink so you gotta get them back, and you have another to “keep them company”, with bottled beer being more expensive than unleaded petrol are you seriously telling me that you are not going to be quids in?

Have I reduced my exercise levels?

Maybe you moved home and you did not join the new local netball/football/badminton/swimming club and then the new job was time consuming and you did not get around to it? Did you used to walk to work, go walking in your spare time......?

Do I drink more alcohol than I used to?

Let's face it, booze is cheaper in real terms than it has been for a long time...we have moved towards more concentrated forms of alcohol, which tastes weak- alcopop anyone? Wines have got stronger, super strength lagers, the possibility to lose our minds and our health are all out there to a greater extent than before..it is just habit, these things sneak up on us. Alcohol is dead calories, it brings a boom and bust in our blood sugar levels, disrupting our sleep and a craving for unhealthy foods to ramp up our depleted blood sugars..Boring, but moderation, and more “dry nights” not only encourage healthier habits, but also take care of our wallets too

Do I snack unhealthily?

By now you should have gathered that by eating a balanced diet, and avoiding unelpful foods as well as too much alcohol result in reduced need to compensate with unhealthy snacks, and maintain balance. Unhealthy snacks are the consequence of unhealthy eating and drinking habits, rather than simply being the focal cause of weight gain and loss of health and fitness

So, a simple calculation, just work out which of these you could do, if you had the reason to do it:

• Drop one takeaway a week/fortnight/month @ £15 a time?
• Drop one pub night a week/fortnight/month @ £20 a time?
• Drop one ready meal a week/fortnight/month @ £5 a time?
• Drop one bus/tube/train/car journey a week/fortnight/month and walk @ £ a time?
• Drop one convenience meal (high street fast food) a week/fortnight/month @ £6 a time?

If you do the first two on this list alone, weekly and you drop them, you are most of the way to affording a WEEKLY TRAINING SESSION, and fortnightly is often enough to maintain progress once you have “traction”.

Go figure, as our transatlantic cousins put it.

So, to return to our controversial question of how much is your health worth to you, the answer can now be “nothing” because that is what sessions for a personal trainer can cost you, with some common-sense alterations to your habits.

In my next post, I will deal with the issue of visualisation and motivation, and how to use them to bolster your outcomes.

Hugh McKenna