She had tears in her eyes.
Heather was 41. A mother. A wife. And nearly 70 pounds overweight.
The years had not been kind. She had been a party girl in her twenties. And it carried over into adulthood.
She thought nothing of buying a case of beer Thursday night, and popping two dozen wobbly pops over a long weekend.
Knees? Sore all the time. Back? Even worse. She was on her feet a lot at her job at the bank.
Her breakfast was a large double-double with a bagel and cream cheese from the drive through on the way to work. Lunch was a drive through burger and fries and soda. And dinner was pizza or chinese ordered so the kids and hubby could eat.
Of her 21 meals a week, 15 were drive-through or ordered in. Or skipped entirely.
Heather walked into our gym desperate for a change. She had been given a free week of classes from a friend and thought I could help her.
I asked her what her goals were.
“I want to fit in my dresses again without looking like…like…like this!”
I nodded.
“I want to not be in pain all the time. I want to be able to wake up and not have to chug 5 coffees a day. My kids are running me ragged. My husband is exhausted when he gets home from work. I never have enough time for myself”.
She started to have a quiver in her voice, and her lip began to tremble.
I gave her a long, quiet minute to just breathe. When she made eye contact again I smiled.
“Heather, if you eat the way I tell you to eat, and show up here 4 times a week for an hour, you will get better at every aspect of your life.”
Her eyes opened wide, and a half-smile appeared. “That sounds amazing! You make it sound so easy.”
My eyes got hard, and I shook my head.
“This will be the hardest fucking thing you ever do in your life. This will be the difference between having a stroke at 62 and wearing a diaper in a nursing home while your kids ignore you... or being a seventy year old hottie that drives a motorbike and goes to kickboxing class instead of pooping her pants”.
Heather gasped so hard it felt like she sucked half the air out of the gym. I just let that paragraph hang in the air for a moment.
Finally she realized how long the awkward pause was. It was like she had been startled from a daydream.
“Ok.”
I guided her through a warm up. She moved like a bag of dodgeballs crammed into a mesh net. Four minutes of stretching and flexibility and she was dripping.
“I gotta quit smoking. I started in grade 10 and I thought that vaping might help. Now I do both.”
“You gotta do a lot of things Heather. Hold this.”
I handed her a plastic pvc pipe 4 feet long weighing 1 pound. I put a big padded mat on the hard gym floor.
“We’re going to do a 10 minute workout Heather. And then a cool down. And you’ll be done for the day.”
I could see the math not computing in her brain. Five minute warm up. 10 minute workout. Five-minute cool down. A big difference from the 90 minute pilates and dance funk workouts that she had quit before.
“Ok Heather, here's the deal. You’re going to grab this plastic pipe at shoulder width in front like this. You’re going to take a deep breath, then squat down as far as you can go, and then stand up and press the pipe overheard. You’re going to exhale, and then take in another deep breath. Then you’re doing to squat down again. That’s called a thruster. Do 3 or 4 and show me you got this.”
She did her best. Hips were tight. The squat wasn’t even close to parallel.
But her overhead press out of the squat was pretty good for someone who was on the computer or her phone all day.
“Ok good. Put down the pipe. Come over here. After you do 21 thrusters, you kneel down on this soft mat, then stretch out on your stomach. Then you’re going to get up, stand tall, take a breath, and clap your hands. That’s going to be your burpee. Show me that you can do 2.”
Heather looked at me like I had just farted in church. She got down on the mat in 8 seconds. She laid there contemplating life, and braced her hands on her knee to get back up. ONE!
I took out the magic marker and wrote “21-15-9” on the whiteboard.
“Ok Heather, here we go. You have ten minutes to do 21 thrusters with the pvc pipe, 21 burpees, then 15 thrusters, then 15 burpees, then 9 thrusters and 9 burpees, and we’re done for the day. I have a 10 minute clock on you. Either you finish before that, or I end it at 10. Any questions?”
“What was a thruster again?”
I chuckled. This wasn’t my first rodeo. I cranked out a quick 5 with the pvc and said “just like this”. She nervously took the pipe from me.
The big red clock on the wall counted down from 10.
“10 seconds! Standby…3…2…1…GO!”
Heather came flying out of the gate like she was in the CrossFit Games. She got to rep 6 on the front squat overhead press thrusters without taking a breath.
“Breathe Heather! Just 15 to go.”
It was rep 9 when reality set it. Acid in her legs. Glutes. Shoulders. Lungs on fire. The pace slowed to a crawl. Squat…press….dance around gasping. This repeated for her last dozen reps.
“Great job Heather! Down on the mat. Let’s recover on the burpees.”
The clock showed 6:42 when Heather finished her 21 lie-down-and-stand-ups.
“Let’s go Heather back on the bar. Just 15 thrusters. 3 minutes to go!”
That look on Heather’s face! Shock. She swiveled to look at the clock. It was like she was in a time warp. She couldn’t believe her eyes.
Again, not my first rodeo. Every athlete is convinced that the coach somehow messes with the clock. It’s amazing how one’s perception of time distorts during a workout.
Heather was in deep water. Legs heavy, arms gassed from getting up off the ground. Every rep was a test of will.
“Forty seconds Heather! Get on those burpees! You can do it!”
She got 2 burpees into the round of 15.
“TIME! TIME HEATHER! You did great.”
Heather lay on the mat, gasping like a fish. Sweat poured, literally poured off her with a faint yellow tinge of nicotine and deep fryer oil.
Her entire workout was 10 minutes. It was 14 minutes more before she could stand and drink a little water.
I high-fived her and started her cool down and stretching as she regained her composure and grip on reality.
She looked like she had been caught in a thunderstorm. Her hair stuck to her face on one side, and stood straight up on the other like she had been hit by lightning.
She was a little gray, and kept chugging her water bottle for dear life. I walked her around our little gym and over to the Wall of Heroes.
We had before and after photos of our members and some of their stories. Party photos, Christmas photos, kids, teens, competition photos the whole shebang.
“Heather, it's really hard to succeed on your own. Here you have coaches and an entire community that all want you to win. If you show up here 100 times your life will never be the same. We never take money from a new member after their first class. I want you to go home and think about it. If you’re on board, come to the Wednesday class at 7pm”.
I handed her a 2-page checklist to review at home. I wanted her to eat a diet of meat and vegetables, seeds and nuts, some fruit, a little starch and no sugar. I include some suggested supplements for her sleeping, her knees and her energy levels.
And just like that, Heather walked out the door.
I wondered if I would ever see her again.
When Heather and I started working together, her knees and back were always sore, and her stamina was in the toilet. She smoked since age 16, vaped, and averaged 25 alcoholic drinks per week. When she drank she ate even worse.
The first thing I did was put her on a week-long detox. Months later she candidly told me how brutal it was on her. She was having brown discharge at night in her sweat from the nicotine, and the headaches the first 48 hours were intense. But she was committed to changing her life, and she did fantastic.
I put her on a plan called The 5-Day Reset. She was drinking 3 high-grade shakes a day, a huge dinner of 5 ounces of either steak or ground beef, and as many bowls of salad with olive oil and vinegar as she could eat. I had her on some special supplements to restore the friendly gut bacteria and support her symptoms as she kicked both smoking and drinking. If you’re interested in trying the 5 Day Reset like Heather did, this is your link to get the package.
Heather was spending $500 a month on smoking, vaping and drinking. She redirected that into real food, supplements, and built a community of friends at CrossFit that encouraged her and supported her on her path to her goals.
I was doing the nutritional orientation with Heather.
I explained the goal diet was meat and vegetables, seeds and nuts, some fruit, a little starch and no sugar. I handed her a pdf of exactly what to eat every day, and a grocery list of what to buy.
She looked at me, blinked three times, tilted her head to the left and said, “Coach, what about chocolate milk?”
“There’s no milk in the diet. Why do you ask?”
Heather shrugged, “I just really like chocolate milk on my Froot Loops.”
“Um, Heather…no Froot Loops.”
Heather’s meal plan was designed around her horrible discipline. She had a husband and 2 kids and literally no real food in the fridge. Everything in their life was eaten through the window of the car or delivered.
I wanted her to eat WAY MORE protein. Her base diet became meat and vegetables, seeds and nuts, some fruit, a little starch, and no sugar.
This is her AI prompt to generate a similar plan.
“act as a nutrition coach for fitness with a specialty in macros. I am a [41 year old female], [5'4'], [192 lbs]. I go to CrossFit [3] times a week for an hour. calculate my macros for an entire day eating to [get stronger] while [reducing my current body weight]. include examples of what to eat for 7 days. I don't like [fish], [tofu], [spinach] or [broccoli]. I like to eat at [McDonalds] and [Tim Hortons] or [Wendy’s] [5 times a week], please include healthy options that meet my macro goals from there. At night I get [sugar cravings] so include an evening snack. I drink [beer on weekends] and suggest healthy alternatives. Include an itemized grocery list for the supermarket."
You can cut and paste that prompt into your favorite AI and it will give you a week's worth of shopping lists, menu plans and macros.
Remember to change anything in a bracket [ ] to your own specifics. Otherwise you’ll get Heather’s version.
Heather dropped 37 pounds in 4 months. She finally fit into her skinny dresses for work. Her knees stopped screaming at her. Amazing.
I wrote a Nostr Reads recently called “How I Accidentally Became The 6th Fittest Baby Boomer In Mexico”. I’d love your feedback!