So far, with a month into Preston’s 12 week fitness journey he is right on target for meeting his goals.  He has lost over 10 pounds and is feeling the excitement and energy that everyone experiences as weight begins to melt away.  Working with Terry, his Personal Trainer at Gold’s Gym in Douglasville, he feels a strong sense of accomplishment as he is pushed to his maximum effort for results.  He is handling the exercise regimen yet conceded that making the right nutritional choices has been difficult, but getting easier as each day passes.

Preston said he realized that he was not in as good condition as he thought at the beginning when he remembered his fitness level back in 1996 (he ran the Peachtree Road Race). He is making progress with his strength and his cardiovascular fitness and is elated by the steady increase in his stamina.  He was sick with a cold for a week and had some scheduling issues but he is now back on track and going strong.

Preston said he feels the pressure of everybody knowing and that is good for his motivation.  Friends are noticing the difference and making comments. At the Douglas County Chamber of Commerce Annual Banquet several people asked him what he was eating, and took pride by being in full control.

Like everyone else Preston struggles with balancing family responsibilities and time at Gold’s Gym.  Preston said that he thanks God that he has the opportunity now to do this for he fears that had he waited a few more years he may not have been around to see his kids go to college.  He is excited about the changes taking place with his mind and body.  He loves the feeling of being able to make the right choices when they come.  He is positive about the coming weeks and is very encouraged by the results.

Congratulations!

You have followed through on that promise to yourself and joined the gym.  You are now one step closer to achieving  healthy lifestyle goals that you set for yourself.

That second step is a big one…using the gym. We are often asked the question “how do I get started?”  Well, here are a few suggestions we pulled together:

1. Wear something comfortable and appropriate for the gym.  Don’t wear jeans or street clothes. They aren’t comfortable to work out in and the studs and belt buckles will tear the leather on the equipment.  Pajamas should be worn only in the privacy of your home; too loose and baggy and a safety hazard for the gym. Wear a shirt with sleeves especially if you sweat a lot. Put on a comfortable pair of gym pants or shorts, t-shirt with sleeves, and athletic shoes and head on over.

2. Take advantage of the free classes offered and learn how to use the equipment. The sign up sheet is in the lobby of the gym.  The staff is really nice, they enjoy what they do and will be glad to answer your questions.

New Member Orientation

Keep It Clean

3. Carry a sweat towel and use it.  If you forget to bring one with you, you can purchase one at the front desk for $1. After you use each machine, wipe it down. If you get the machine real sweaty grab the spray bottle of cleaner and blue towel and wipe your machine. If you don’t sweat, wipe it down anyway.  It makes you look like you are working hard and people appreciate that you are considerate. If you don’t have a sweat towel with you, we will ask you to purchase one at the front desk.  We take cleanliness seriously.

4. Oh yeah, don’t come in all dirty and sweaty because you plan to take a shower after you workout.  That is not pleasant for the other members who are working out with you.

5. If you shower after your workout, make sure you have everything you need before you get all wet.

6.  If your membership includes the sauna and whirlpool, get the access code from the front desk before you get into your bathing suit. If you are modest it can seem like a long walk to the front desk. The access code changes monthly.

Respect Yourself, The Gym & Other Members

7.  Don’t lift so much weight that you feel compelled to drop the weights on the floor. That actually damages the equipment and it makes other people stare. Loud grunting and groaning is strongly discouraged.  Foul language and disrespectful behavior is also unwelcome.

8.  Look around you; there are people of all ages, sizes and shapes.  Everyone is here for the same reason … the pursuit of good health.

9. Enjoy yourself while you are here.  You will have a chance to meet some really nice people.

10.  Keep showing up and don’t take yourself too seriously.  The more you come, the more comfortable you will begin to feel.

Personal Trainers and Nutrition Help Available

The Gold’s Gym team in Douglasville and Austell want you to enjoy your time with us.  Your good health and healthy lifestyle goals are important to us. Certified personal trainers are available to help you with your weight loss or personal training goals.

Gold’s Gym Weight Loss

So Gold’s Gym has this member named Tom who is faced with a dilemma.  He is approximately 40 pounds overweight and is having terrible knee problems, so much so that he may have to have his knees replaced.  He also has back problems and constantly goes to the doctor for issues with his feet, his knees, back, and general health.  He has spent an untold amount of money on treatments. 

Doctor recommends weight loss

 Tom lives in Villa Rica and exercises with us three days a week here at Gold’s Gym.  Like all of us he loves to eat,  has given some effort to controlling his calorie intake and weight loss, but it has only a token commitment.  The doctor has told him he has the spector of  surgery down the road if he doesn’t change.  The doc also told him that many of his knee, back and foot problems might disappear if he will drop the weight. 

What would your decision be?  Would you have enough discipline to change your habits and drop the weight to avoid surgery and many other problems, or do you go on with your present lifestyle and suffer the consequences? 

Personal Trainer, Group Fitness or Else? 

If Tom got involved with a Personal Trainer, started Group Fitness Classes, and focused on his nutrition, he would be well on his way to changing his health, changing his quality of life, and feeling so much better very soon. 

 So what would you do? Would you do it?  Can you change your body and then change your life in the process, or is something else in charge of your life besides you?

Scott Johnson of Gold’s Gym in Douglasville is shown here with Juanita Clay of A Gift of Love. Gold’s donated proceeds from it’s annual Douglas County Benefit tennis tournament to the charity and also  to the local chapter of The Boys and Girls Club. The tournament, in it’s 25th year, has now raised over $200,000 for deserving non-profits in the community. Commented Gold’s Gym General Partner Gordon Johnson, “One of the great pleasures of being in this business is the opportunity we have to contribute to worthy cuases  in Douglas County. Gold’s Gym will continue to help wherever we can, and we are also grateful for all the support that the community has given, and continues to give Gold’s Gym”.

Good Friend.  Better Results

Preston Barnes has been a friend of mine, and an “off and on” member at Gold’s Gym since 1991. Like every one of us he struggles with the issues of life, stress, weight loss, and general health and fitness. He has been searching for the right time to make the right move.

His wife (Beth) has recently gone through a program here at Gold’s where she successfully accomplished her personal goals of weight loss and body sculpting.

Laced with reasonable self-discipline, the powerful exercise programs of strength training, group exercise, and cardiovascular sessions have totally changed her life in good ways.

Inspired To Succeed

Preston has been inspired by his beautiful wife and is ready to seriously change his body and his life with Gold’s Gym Personal Training and Group Exercise.

Preston is the owner of Provident Office Environments, Inc. and is on the Board of Directors of the Douglas County Chamber of Commerce. This past month when we hosted The Douglas County Chamber of Commerce Coffee Card Exchange, Preston graciously volunteered to go through our Gold’s Visual Fitness Program where he got to see a virtual image of how he looks now, and then how he will look when he reaches his fitness goals. This program also displayed the incredible health-risk reductions made when a person gets in shape again. That made a powerful impression on Preston, as well as all of our Chamber of Commerce Members who were watching the demonstration.

Weight Loss Goals Set

The Weight Loss Journey Begins

Preston is 44 years old and weighs in now at 253 lbs. His percentage of body fat is 32.5%. He has a goal of dropping 50 – 75 lbs., and reducing his body fat into the mid-teens. For 12 weeks he will work with one of our personal trainers and utilize our outstanding fitness equipment and total fitness environment to see what differences he can make.

He just started a full program working with one of our elite Personal Trainers, Terry Maxwell, going through a solid cardiovascular and strength program several times a week. Preston said he already feels the difference.

Personal Training Support

Terry has given nutritional advice and guidelines to Preston. Although he says he feels hungry at various times, that will begin to change as he starts to eat more often (6 x a day), and wean his body from the bad to the better nutritional foods. The body fights any change tooth and nail but will adapt relatively quickly.

Preston has taken his “before” pictures and is putting them in strategic locations (refrigerator, bathroom mirror, car visor, etc.) where he can see them when he is in need of motivational gunfire during each day. Thinking right, staying on schedule, and working the plan will help make this dream become reality. Those of us here at Gold’s Gym are pulling for him and have all the confidence in Preston successfully reaching his goals and discovering his youthful body (and mind) once again. We will be following his progress while sending our own positive energies to help him succeed. Give Preston a high five when you see him.

Tom Butler, GM Gold’s Gym Hospital Drive, Douglasville, Georgia

Depression and Obesity Coexist

Obesity and depression often go hand-in-hand in middle-aged women, a new U.S. study found. The research collected information on the height, weight, dietary and exercise habits, and body image of 4,641 women, ages 40 to 65, enrolled in a health plan. The women also completed a questionnaire used to measure depression symptoms. Women with clinical depression were more than twice as likely to be obese (a body mass index of 30 or more), and obese women were more than twice as likely to be depressed, the study found.

Poor Body Image Plays a Part

It also found that women with BMIs of 30 or higher exercised the least, had the poorest body image, and consumed 20 percent more calories than women with lower BMIs. The link between obesity and depression remained intact even when the researchers factored in marital status, education, tobacco use and antidepressant use. The study was published in the January/February issue of the journal General Hospital Psychiatry. It’s likely that depression and obesity fuel one another, said lead author Dr. Gregory Simon, a psychiatrist and researcher at Group Health Cooperative in Seattle.

Depression Hurts Weight Loss

“When people gain weight, they’re more likely to become depressed, and when they get depressed, they have more trouble losing weight,” he said in a prepared statement. The stigma of being overweight can damage self- esteem and efforts to lose weight. “It’s not that these women are clueless. It’s that they’re hopeless,” said Simon, who suggested that if obese women focus on rebuilding their self esteem, it may help them lose weight.

Learn More about the NEW Total Weight Loss Program and get started on your weight loss program today

By: Skip Johnson
Douglasville Gold’s Gym Managing Partner

Do You Need A Change?
There comes a time for each of us, whether it is through a sickness, a divorce, a death of someone close to us, a financial hardship, or some other crisis, that we will each say, “It’s time. It’s time for a change. It’s time to find out who I really am, who I really can be, and it’s time to take my life to a level that I have never known before. It’s time for a new me.”

I See Health And Fitness Changes In Douglasville Everyday
As an owner in a health and fitness facility, I am privileged to get to witness these great changes in peoples’ lives on a regular basis (I have often said that aside from the ministry–and I was a young adult Sunday School teacher for twelve years–the health and fitness business makes more of a difference in peoples’ lives than any business I can think of).

The Emotional Benefits Of Fitness Are Surprising
When people walk in the door and tell us that they are ready to see what they can do with themselves physically, they are seldom prepared for what will happen emotionally when they commit themselves to an exercise program. In fact, recent clinical research has shown that exercise is often as effective as therapy for improving the lives of patients who are suffering from depression.

Your Magic Bullet
Additionally, exercise has been found to have dramatic effects on the lives of persons who live with illnesses from anxiety to diabetes and from high blood pressure to insomnia. It is the closest thing there is to a “magic bullet” for dealing with the physical and emotional difficulties of life. It simply “works”, but it takes you or me making a decision to make a change. It takes us saying, “I’m ready—it’s time.”

What’s Holding You Back?
But, we say, we don’t have time. Or we say that we don’t have the energy. Or we say that we have too many other pressing needs or we have too many other people counting on us and too many other commitments in our lives, and those are true. And, they always will be true. They always will be until we rise above our busy schedules and our commitments and our fears and our disbelief in ourselves and say, “It’s time.” Because time and convenience won’t come to us, so we must meet them halfway. They won’t come to us when “things settle down” or “the kids get in college” or “when we get a better job with better hours” or even when “we retire”.

What If You Could?
So if we want to begin an exercise program, then we set our daring goal and we begin looking at how responsibilities and events in our lives can be positioned to allow our goals to come to fruition. We start looking at the possibilities of what could happen for ourselves and the people in our lives through the achievement of these goals–and we start looking at how we can make choices to facilitate our starting and progressing into this new, exciting, rewarding chapter of our lives. We simply begin because the momentum of our decision that “it’s time” pushes us forward in a bold, unstoppable way. It’s time.

As we begin a new year, we make resolutions. But why not make a resolution today? Now. We’ll fail at some, and we’ll succeed at some. But one thing is for sure: the ability to make a resolution to change our lives through activity is within our grasp. All we have to do is take one small action to start good things happening. The many results of are “ripe for the picking”.

It All Starts With Your Decision
If you have never been involved in a consistent exercise program, or if it has been years since you have been active, the clock is ticking. The decision to start an exercise program will be one of the most powerful decisions you will make in your life. No Kidding. I see it every day. A decision to get fit and make regular exercise a habit is a force of nature.

It will positively affect every aspect of your life, your family’s lives and the lives of those that are important to you. Take a deep breath, step forward and begin. It’s time.

Exercise Protects Against Heart Disease

About 60 percent of the protection provided to women by exercise against heart disease and stroke comes from its effect on a few specific risk factors, says a U.S. study in the journal Circulation. Researchers assessed cardiovascular risk factors and exercise levels in more than 27,000 women, ages 45-90 (average age 55) enrolled in the Women’s Health Study who were followed for more than 11 years for new diagnosis of heart attack and stroke.Women who exercised the most were 40 percent less likely to have a heart attack or stroke than those who did the least amount of exercise.

Prevent Heart Attacks & Strokes

“Regular physical activity is enormously beneficial in preventing heart attack and stroke,” lead author Dr. Samia Mora, instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in the divisions of preventive and cardiovascular medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said in a prepared statement. “We found that even modest changes in risk factors for heart disease and stroke, especially those related to inflammation/hemostasis and blood pressure, can have a profound impact on preventing clinical events. This study is the first to examine the importance of a variety of known risk factors in explaining how physical activity prevents heart disease and stroke,” Mora said.

Learn more about how exercise can increase your health and wellness.

Don’t Be a Holiday Statistic

Did you know that the average person gains eight pounds during the holiday season? And if the extra pounds don’t come off by March, they probably won’t be coming off that year. The good news is that you don’t have to be a holiday statistic. As we approach the holiday season we will be faced with family gatherings, company and neighborhood parties, delicious meals, and homemade desserts. There are ways to get through the season without adding any inches to your waistline. We’ll share with you a couple of our favorite tips.

Focus on Family not Food

This year focus on the reason for the holiday season. Your emphasis and attention should be on family and special friends and less on the food that is served.

1. Never go to a party hungry! Everything looks good when you are hungry. Even those over cooked sausage balls of Aunt Mary’s.
2. Remember the “three bite rule”. The first three bites of anything tastes the best. After that your taste buds are actually dulled to the taste. Put your fork down.
3. Water should be your constant companion during the holiday season. It helps your skin look it’s best and it is a great way to feel full when you begin to feel tempted.
4. Alcohol always lowers your resistance. If you must drink, drink responsibly and between alcoholic beverages, drink a glass of sparkling water with a lemon or line twist. It is refreshing and it helps keeps you hydrated.
5. Make sure you stay rested. It’s tempting to burn both ends of the candle. Sleep deprivation makes it hard to resist temptation.
6. Most get- togethers are potluck. Take one of your low-fat favorite appetizers.
7. Don’t skip that exercise class or work out. The exercise will help keep the stress at bay, keep you looking and feeling your best, and keep the hunger under control. Need I say more?
8. When short on time try to make it to a Group Active class where you will focus on all the components of fitness in a 45-minute format.
9. If you know it is going to be a tough season, you may want to engage the help of a personal trainer. He/She can design a realistic plan with realistic goals and hold you accountable throughout the season.

Start NOW!

Begin this holiday season with a clear path to better health. Don’t wait until January to start your resolution, start today! Look great and feel great right through the holiday season. Set your goals and enjoy the season!

Golds Gym is always available to help. Whether you live in Douglasville, Villa Rica, Temple, Hiram or Dallas. We have a location and program for you.