frustrations and disappointment

I recently wrote about my serious goal of losing weight.  The good news is I’ve actually been making some progress.  Slow progress, yes, but progress all the same.  I’ve lost about 6 pounds in the last 3 weeks, which almost puts me back to my pre-Christmas vacation weight. 

The bad news is that I’ve been under some stress related to my efforts ever since I met with my personal trainer the Friday before last.  I think he is being ridiculous, so I’m trying to find the guts to fire him, knowing that he will give me a speech if I do so.  (Let’s just say, I’m a little conflict avoidant…)

Backing up for a minute, I hired a personal trainer when I got back from the US.  The whole thing was paid for by my mother, who insisted that I get one because she was worried about me.  I finally agreed, because I was worried about me too and, hey, this was something that I had never tried before. 

And things went pretty well for the first week, putting aside the fact that I was sleeping for a few hours after each session, that I had hired him to have him help me with my diet and yet he appeared to have little experience with that, and that I learned after hiring him that working out for an hour three times a week wasn’t going to help me lose weight anyways (it would just be good for other reasons).  We did circuit training, and I did notice that I felt a little different after only three sessions.  I don’t know what it was, but it was something; maybe you would say that I felt like I was a little more physically capable.  I also had started this shared food diary with my sister via google docs, which led me to eat much better (namely, I stopped for the most part eating lots of candy and I started cooking dinner more often).  And I began to lose weight, which was great.

So, what’s the problem, right?  Well, here’s where things get interesting: it appears that my trainer and I are completely incompatible in how we work.  He would probably be an okay trainer on The Biggest Loser (let’s throw out your whole fridge and change your whole life in one week!), although at least the nutritional plan of the show allows you to eat normal looking meals (you know, to use recipes to make something as opposed to eat this hunk of meat with some grain and veggies).  However, he does not seem like an okay trainer for me.

It started out innocently enough.  I asked him if we could move our sessions to either maybe after 5 pm or early in the morning because having them at 3:30 was disrupting my work and life schedule.  I explained that I was no longer doing anything past 3 pm since we did our sessions and that it would be much better for me to have the sessions before or after I did my work because I have been trying hard to have a normal work schedule.  I thought it was a legitimate concern, however he thought I was being ridiculous.  He went on to claim that I had already changed the time once (which, I think he mixed things up, because I had never talked about meeting at 1:30, which is smack in the middle of my day), that I wasn’t committed enough (even though he kept telling me that he was so proud of me during our sessions), and that I was just full of excuses, especially because I didn’t want to do his diet program.  Oh, and I had cancelled one session because I had a migraine headache.  But then, he said (and I still can’t believe this), that he didn’t think we could work together anymore because I’m “not keeping up my half of the bargain.”

I found this hard to believe.  Here I cancelled one session because of a migraine, said I would just work with my sister on the nutritional stuff, and wanted to discuss the time of sessions and he didn’t think that we could work together?  And oh, I had lost 5 pounds, but that didn’t seem to matter.  Now, I was upset, and more than a bit defensive.

Anyways, in the end I didn’t want to end things badly because I worried that I would feel badly about myself for doing it, so I patched things up and he thinks everything is fine now (as long as I’m “keeping up my half.”)   But in getting things to end well, I had to agree to a plan that I realize is completely crazy and unrealistic (and which I knew was such then but didn’t want to fight with him).  Here’s the plan: in the next week, I will completely change my life forever: I will cook ALL of my meals, I will completely clean my apartment and keep it clean, I will fix myself up all nice, I will feel better about myself, I will exercise every day, I will eat perfectly, …  lol.  No, seriously.  I’m not joking.

And then he proceeded to give me a talk about was I really motivated? and so forth.  lol.

I tried to explain to him that, um, you know, I do much better in making small changes first as opposed to changing everything and burning out like I usually do; that it’s actually hard to make changes in your life even when you are really motivated, etc. but he just couldn’t understand why someone couldn’t completely change their life in, say, a day.  And yes, he had almost zero advice on how to get to this perfect self except to just do it.

So I did what I always do when I’m overwhelmed: I did nothing for maybe the next week, not even knowing where to begin.  And then I realized: this is absurd.  Completely absurd.  If the guy is not helping me anymore but making me feel terrible and overwhelmed, leading to me more or less doing nothing for a week, then I should fire the guy.  I’ve just been avoiding doing it because I may have to meet up with the guy to get back my money.  And, like I said, I hate conflict.  I’m not all that emotionally tough and conflict tends to give me migraines.

Sigh.  Am I completely crazy or am I being reasonable? 

It’s just disappointing because I had been doing so well, and now I realize that I should have taken my sister’s advice and looked at multiple people before I hired someone.

Now I’ve been thinking, do I really need (or want) another personal trainer?  I think I could probably just do the weight lifting stuff myself.  Maybe I should hire a nutritionist?

What do you think? 

Oh, and my apologies for the long rant, lol.  I just needed to get this off of my chest, even though I was afraid I would sound stuck up saying, “oh, poor me, my personal trainer is terrible…”  :-).

Thanks for listening.  Your advice would be much appreciated.