Any cysters that are: Personal trainers, or fitness instructors?

KickingStones · 10-27-2009, 05:53 PM

If so, I'd really love to talk to someone and get some career advice.

I'm currently a college student in a one year Health Science program. I need to decide what program I want to do next year, and I REALLY want to do Fitness and Health Promotion (to be a personal trainer). I've always been extremly interested in nutrition and fitness, it would be the perfect career for me.

However, with my PCOS I'm so self concious about it. I'm about 20 pounds overweight which I know isn't a huge deal, but it's embarressing talking health with people when they take one look at my spare tire and think twice about my advice. I have lost a few pounds and it's been a HUGE battle, one that I'm going to continue. But the chance of me losing the extra fat before school starts is pretty slim, so I need to accept that.

I'm very fit, it's just my appearence. I'd love to talk to a cyster who works in fitness.

TheBumbler · 10-28-2009, 06:11 PM

I started as an assistant trainer at CrossFit Regina about a month ago but I don't know if I can give you any career advice since mostly what I do for a living is sit in a cubicle and write stuff for "the man". One day I'd love to be able to move into doing nutrition counseling as well as training full time!

februarystar · 10-29-2009, 06:54 AM

I was the fattest girl in my nutrition classes and I'm definately still the fattest girl in my sports nutrition paper. It has got to me - on occassion I'd get and up and get dressed in the morning and become overwhelmed by it all and skip class. But I'm definately glad I got the degree. If nothing else it cleared up the myths about dieting for myself and for others in the class. I may still do another course - like personal trainer or exercise prescription or something.

I think most of the stigma came from thinking that people assumed I ate too much and thats why I was fat - the reality was that I was eating less than most of them but I was eating the wrong things, I was IR, had the 'slowest' metabolism in the world and did little or no exercise. I was one of those people who started at the gym every other week, did 30min on the exercycle in my 'fat-burning' zone, go home and deprive myself of a lot of things that I should have been eating and feel even worse about myself when I didn't get results. But one class we were looking at a research paper that was comparing different diets for weight loss and I had a burst of self-confidence and started sharing my story about fad diets and (lack of) weight loss with the class. I know it was a real eye-opener for a lot of those in the class who had never even been a little overweight and yet they were about to be set let loose in the world to offer nutrition counselling - they were all asking me questions and I was able to clear up some misconceptions about 'fat people'.lol

That did a lot for my confidence and made me realise I have a lot to offer. I'm still not at a weight where I'm ready to help others on a 1-on-1 basis, but I hope that sometime in the near future I'll be able to compare a 'before' and 'during photo with people who want my advice - I guess as proof that I know what they are on about! For me personally, its more reassuring taking advice from people who have been there, done that and are enjoying sharing what they know. I consider myself to know a lot about nutrition, but every now and then I still learn things I never would have learnt in the classroom as an average weight person because I've experienced for myself.

Sorry - thats kinda long and in depth - but I truely am proud of myself and dont want anyone else to hold themselves back from doing what they want!