Monday, October 4, 2010

Favorite female fitness & fat - loss - experts

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Jade Teta ND, CSCS

Despite the fact that Keoni and I have names to make you think we are female, we are not :-) . While we are physicians and trainers who have spent a great deal of time specializing in hormonal fat loss and female related fat loss, AND have worked with thousands of women of all sizes, shapes and ages it is always nice to get the female perspective on things. Since the release of our new book The New ME Diet many women who have read the book are excited to share their success stories and questions and want to learn more. The other day a female client of mine who is also a personal trainer asked me if I had to pick 3 of the best female fitness and fat loss experts in the industry who would I choose? I knew my answer immediately and thought I share it here.

Before I give it away, I wanted to share my insight with you on what makes for a top notch expert in my book. Experience, education, and communication. First, you have to have experience. And to me this is mostly about clients trained.  Call it my own bias, but I don’t believe you can be a fat loss expert without training as a personal trainer. If there is one rule I have learned in this field, it is that any expert who treats everyone the same has not worked with many people. By the same token, an expert who has lost 100 pounds and kept it off is inspiring and amazing, but this does not necessarily translate into helping others; because everyone is different and the only way to find that out is to work with as many different types of people as possible.  What works for you may or may not work for others. While I don’t know all of these women personally, from reading their information it is obvious the experience is there, both training themselves and others. I know there are many fat loss experts who know what the books say, but to me if you are going to give exercise and diet advice, book smarts is not good enough. You need on-the-ground, in-the-trenches hours in the gym training with real people who are struggling. This is the major reason why a doctor sitting across the desk telling you what to do, no matter how much they know, can never substitute for a expert personal trainer. If they happen to be a doctor or nutritionist too, great.

The other things these female fat loss experts would need, in my opinion, is education and excellent communication skills. To me, you still have to have the education and this does not necessarily mean a fancy degree.  It means a commitment to learning everything that goes into body change. You have to study nutrition, mental and emotional concerns, endocrinology (the study of hormones), exercise physiology, etc. And finally, you need to be able to communicate this information in a way that touches not only your small group of people, but influences many people.  Obviously, this is a rare skill set. Many experts have one or two of these attributes, but few have experience, education and communication.

JJ Virgin

I feel lucky to know JJ Virgin personally and call her a friend. She IS a celebrity and  “celebrity trainer” but I don’t hold that against her :) ………I am always a bit skeptical of trainers who are celebrities themselves or train celebrities. Celebrities, who have time and the motivation of money and their bodies being seen by millions of people, are in no way representative of real people with dysfunctional metabolisms. However, JJ did not start out as a celebrity trainer and still works with mostly regular people. She built her reputation the old fashioned way by delivering results for those who have the most difficult time with body change. The people we call weight loss resistance. These are the people who the standard protocols don’t work for.  The ones who most trainers give up on. She gets even these people results. She also has the numbers, having trained thousands of women in the trenches for years as a personal training.  She is part of what I call the new “hybrid fat loss professional”.  She has her PHD in holistic nutrition yet continues her personal training. The hybrid experience as a nutritionist, holistic health expert and trainer allows her to address all aspects of body change. She has many credits to her name as her career has exploded. JJ is a spokesperson for companies interested in helping combat the the health and fitness crisis in this country including Emergen-C and helping Subway become more fat-loss lifestyle friendly. She also spent two seasons as a health expert on “The Dr. Phil Show” and is the co-star of the TLC reality series, Freaky Eaters. But what impresses me more is the results she generates for her clients. Finally, her communication skills and passion for what she does put her over the edge as one of the top female fitness and fat loss experts in my book. I don’t want to miss the opportunity to plug her new book “Six Weeks to Sleeveless and Sexy” (Simon & Schuster). Which can be found at this link http://www.sixweekstosleevelessandsexy.com/.

2) Rachel Cosgrove

I don’t know Rachel personally, but her and her husband Alwyn are Rock Stars of the strength and conditioning and personal training world. I believe it is for good reason. One of the things that strikes me about experts are the ones who confidently and unabashedly buck the establishment.  Rachel is a muscular and fit female who with a handful of other top female fitness experts is redefining what fit and beautiful looks like.  She is the antithesis of the waif model and celebrated thin and flabby look so many women gravitated to in the last three decades.  She owns and operates one of the most successful gyms in the country. Again, this is not a gym built for celebrities and elite athletes. It is a place where real people go to get real results. She, like JJ, has built her reputation through training a lot of individuals over a lot of years.  She also has the education to go along with the experience. She has a degree in physiology, advanced certifications in fitness and conditioning, and has trained under some of the best in the business for performance based and fat loss nutrition. Communication-wise Rachel writes for some of the top fitness mags in the country and has an excellent book on fitness and fat loss called The Female Body Breakthrough (Rodale). To me it is a must read for any women wanting to learn what it really takes to deliver results in fat loss. Check it out on amazon here: amazon.com/femalebodybreakthrough.com

3) Jill Coleman

Ok, full disclosure here. Jill is my wife.  However, before we met and got married it was apparent she was a whole different level of fitness and fat loss expert. Like Rachel, Jill’s physique is muscular and athletic and at the same time feminine. This look is quickly becoming the new definition of health, vitality and femininity. She has immense experience. I have personally never met a fitness professional with the same amount of experience Jill has. Not only does she have close to 10,000 workouts under her belt as a personal trainer, but she is one of the few fitness experts who crosses over into group fitness as well. She has taught everything from step, kick-boxing, barbell classes, yoga, spinning, bootcamp, and on and on. When you add the experience up into a measure I call “estimated client contacts” she is likely sitting somewhere near 50,000 contacts, certainly more than Keoni and I combined…which is a lot. The other measure I like to use is how many people have you helped lose 50 or 100 pounds and keep it off? Again, Jill has big numbers here. Jill’s particular niche is taking people who are very unfit or overweight and not just helping them lose the pounds, but getting them in the absolute best shape of their lives. Many of these clients go on to compete as physique athletes where they show their lean muscular bodies on stage in front of hundreds of people. Jill also is what I call a triple threat in the business because she is a personal trainer, has a masters in holistic nutrition, and is a physique competitor and fitness model. It has been amazing watching her quickly becoming a celebrity in the field. She both writes and appears in half a dozen fitness magazines every month as well as lectures continuously on fat loss and physique development. She has published her first series of books with co-author LeAura Alderson called “My Gym Trainer.” This book can be purchased on amazon or at www.mytrainerfitness.com


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