I recenetly had a fitness assessment at my gym over the weekend with a personal trainer, only because my insurance will reimburse my gym membership and give me free stuff if I demonstrate that I am in shape. I've had some really negative experiences in the past with the personal trainers at my gym, and now I have further proof that they're really just looking to sell training services- not to improve the health and well being of the clients.

1. My body fat was measured at 20 percent which is categorized as "good". The trainer said that if I wanted my body fat percentage to be in the "excellent" range (18 percent or lower) I would have to lose 4 lbs, down to 107. I am currently 5'5 and 111. He told me it would only take me three weeks to do this.

2. I told him how much I workout (running 5-8 miles a day, 5-6 times per week). He advised me that to meet my body fat percentage goal of 18 percent or less, I should eat 1250 calories a day. I told him that wasn't possible considering all the running I was doing, but he ignored that and told me I should still be around 1250 per day. This number was actually generated by a computer. In the computer system, there is place to input your activity level, and it gets factored into the equation. Only "activity level" means the type of job you have: sedentary vs. walking around vs. heavy lifting. I was categorized as light activity because I sit at my desk all day.

3. When asked what types of food I eat, I told the trainer that I ate a lot of lowfat cottage cheese, yogurt, chicken, sushi, and south beach diet bars (which contain a lot of protein). His dietary recommendation to me was to try and eat more protein.

4. According to my BMI test, I am underweight. But he said it was still okay to lose more weight, because you can't really go by BMI. After all, he's 5'8 and weighs 205, categorizing him as obese, even though it's all muscle. So that means I should ignore the fact that I am underweight, and continue to lose those 4 pounds.

5. I told him that I ran a marathon recently, and a half marathon last weekend. A few minutes later we did a treadmill test. Before setting the treadmill for the test, he asked me if I could run at 4.5 mph for 5 minutes straight.

6. He told me that my body fat percentage was lowest in my arms, but yet my bicep strength was weak. He then encouraged me to lose some body fat in my legs, even though these legs run 30-40 miles per week. If he knows the secret to spot reducing, I'd wish he'd let me in on it!

The personal trainer mindset is that everyone has to have fitness goals. And they want to sell you their personal training services, so of course they are going to highlight areas for improvement. The funny thing is, no matter which personal trainer I go to at this gym, they all tell me similar things. It's not like I just got one moron on Sunday by chance. They've all been like this. The first few trainers who I met with when I joined the gym encouraged me down to a weight of 102, and congratulated me when they couldn't pinch any fat on me with the calipers.

I actually took this issue to the corporate head of personal training back in 2003- the person responsible for all of these gyms nationwide. My main concern was that they were classifying all body fat percentages under 18 percent as "excellent" and nowhere did it specify a lower limit. This person gave me the runaround about how they don't make revisions to their forms very often.

I have the good sense now to ignore most of what he said and not be insulted by his comments. If I took his advice seriously, I would be starving myself, tracking my calories and weight, and spending even more time at the gym. I'm not doing that. I'll send the results to my insurance company, get gym membership reimbursement, and that will be that.

The only other good thing that came out of this assessment was my off-the-chart cardio level. Finally, I get at least one gold star.

Source: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/159136/personal_trainers_and_th...