I Paid $1,941.28 for 8 Months of Online Fitness Coaching — What I Discovered Will Surprise You.
It ended up costing me $58 per pound of fat lost (forever)
I was terrified of parting with my hard-earned cash, and I don’t blame you if you feel the same.
We’re in the age of fake gurus, and it’s a minefield.
A good friend and three-time world body fitness champion, AJ Ellison, always told me, “Fitness is a metaphor for life. What you look like on the outside is a direct result of the effort you put in. The results never lie”.
When searching for an “expert” to help you with something that might not be your strength, like fitness, which wasn’t for me, it always helps to follow the results.
Call me shallow, but if your fitness trainer is shaped like a potato (my former self) or the person giving you advice hasn’t got their health and wellness in order, they’re not the person you should be speaking to.
I’ll cop some flak for that, but it’s the truth.
Since I got suckered into one of those pyramid-selling schemes and paid top dollar to attend Robber Kiyosaki’s conferences, I’ve scrutinised paying for education and mentorship savagely.
Someone with a full-time corporate job would stand on stage like a messiah screeching advice about going self-employed and “owning your destiny”. Crikey.
It would be slowly drummed into you by the person above you on the scheme — “The coaching and the conferences are an investment into your future, Jayden.” While they simultaneously collect your money.
There’s a place for mentorship, coaching and education done in the right way and from the right people.
I watched one video from world-renowned entrepreneur Garyvee when he said, “Fitness isn’t a strength for me, but the way I’ve hacked it is to be accountable to someone else, someone I couldn’t let down, someone I needed to impress.”
It was a light bulb moment. I was like, “That’s me, that’s me he’s talking about, I’m the same”.
My fitness and diet were so Helter Skelter because I lacked accountability to someone else.
Whenever I went to the gym or did an exercise routine, I wasn’t usually with someone who was fitness-orientated — I never tracked anything, had a regularly scheduled time for the gym or had any reference points for progress.
I never had a game plan, not once.
That all changed. When it did, it turned me from clinically obese to shredded abs, losing 33+ pounds in 8 months.
The dominoes started to fall when I forced myself into a position of accountability and bit the financial bullet.
Having an all-encompassing system backed by the Big Brother effect of an online coach monitoring like a hawk was one of the most significant unlocks in my fitness journey.
Some of it may surprise you.
Let’s dive in.
Authors’ Remark: Below, you’ll find some non-affiliate links. My friend Chris, now a full-time online trainer, is behind the program I joined.
You can officially be superficial.
The cliche quote of “success leaves clues” is one you can take to the bank.
When you’re looking for help, search for actual results. It starts with what the person looks like. I know, yuck.
It’s shallow, but it’s true.
Look — I appreciate some outliers where personal and online trainers can have larger frames and not be lean just because of their genetics, but you’re paying someone here, so you want guaranteed results.
They have to be living their advice, or it’s just a bunch of theories.
Here’s what I looked for and what you can consider, too (being certified was the Mendoza line).
- Is the person you’ll be paying for advice and help in good shape? Are they eating their own cooking? Metaphorically speaking.
- Does their lifestyle reflect yours? For example, if you have kids and a family, and they’re single with no kids, they won’t resonate or be able to put themselves in your shoes.
- Have they shown a history of producing significant results for people, and are they results you aspire to?
Of all those considerations, this one is the most important for me.
4. Do you like the person and how they come across in videos or a chat you had with them?
It might sound trivial, but it’s the most important because when you like someone, you never want to disappoint them.
Like Uncle Gary Mentioned earlier, you should feel like you want to impress them.
Once the wheels are in motion, you’ll search for those dopamine hits of praise when your weight starts to come off.
From personal experience, as that momentum builds, you’ll lean into your fitness journey more and more.
Effective technology is like using a compass to guide you.
It can also expose the heck out of you, which isn’t bad.
I went through the rigmarole of paying someone $40 for an in-person gym session three times a week for three months until I realised I didn’t have a bottomless pit of money.
Oh, and we never mentioned nutrition once. Lol.
Finding an online coach who maximises the use of technology helps you cover every angle and exposes you to more.
There is no escaping accountability when both of you look at a dashboard of the below metrics.
- You log your water intake
- You weigh yourself every day.
- You take progress pics monthly.
- Your phone tracks your step count.
- You tape measure every part of your body weekly.
- You scan your food to track your macros and calories.
Let’s take a sneak peek at the Trainerize app dashboard.
Chris cleverly overlays his face on the screen on video and walks me through each of these sections weekly, reviewing each area to fine-tune (I declined the option of daily check-ins)
One of many valuable tips I didn’t find when going solo — was the scrutiny around my tracking.
I typically have peanut butter on toast for breakfast.
I was guessing how much was going on the toast, and in the early stages of starting my journey, Chris would search through the meals I was having and say, “Bud, peanut butter is calorific. How are you measuring it?”.
I’d respond with, “I’m using my eyes.” Lol
Now, I use a weighing scale for everything, and it’s just one of many scenarios that have kept me on course.
It’s like having an engineer fix your plane while you fly it.
Skin in the game is your gentle reminder to keep pushing.
I didn’t anticipate spending the money I did — initially, it was a major hurdle I had to overcome.
While I was pyramid selling for Kleeneze, Jim Rohn was one of the authors we were force-fed on cassette, which is the only part I reflect on with fondness.
I could lip-sync that 4-hour YouTube video of him in Dallas Forworth, where he gave the most remarkable self-development speech ever.
He said something that has stuck in my mind, like a faded photograph and influenced my view on education.
Jim Rohn: “Free is easy — I used to belong to the 90% who couldn’t be bothered even if it was easy. Free is easy — it’s why no one uses their library card despite knowing they have the wisdom of the world available.”
You can take Jimmy Boys’ quote as gospel.
Reflecting on my fitness journey, that bit of ‘skin in the game’ kept my hand in when I wanted to punk out, unlike that neglected library card.
As part of the deal with the programme, I had to stick around for at least three months, so there was no turning back.
Plenty of times, I subconsciously considered defaulting to my old self-destructive habits.
Then you get that friendly nudge from your monthly direct debit leaving your account. It’s like your little reminder to make the most out of what you’ve invested.
It’s a mindset shift people rarely speak about.
Online Trainers use training apps that inject you with dopamine.
This time, it’s for a good cause without you noticing.
Studies show that our apps act as a dopamine loop, which we demonise when scrolling through Mark Suckerberg’s Facebook for hours.
When you’re breezing through a fitness app’s bite-sized workouts, and your screen lights up with applause and a badge after each session at the gym, it’s a subtle but often overlooked perk of online programs.
Feast your eyes on my latest badass badges.
Research shows — “Smartphone app setting mimics the “dopamine reward system” if the intervention is tailored for motivation or hedonic enhancement (increasing pleasure of an experience), and it has been shown that a simple reward (such as a digital badge) can increase motivation.”
Layering this in with a workout has a stimulative effect and increases dopamine and motivation.
It’s far more effective than me aimlessly wandering into the gym like a lost hiker and randomly hopping on a machine with no clear plan.
I didn’t realise it then, but I needed someone to walk me through failure.
Going from destroying your diet to getting back in the saddle is the most profound habit you can build up.
My Achilles heel was and still is binge drinking weekends followed by a greasy Turkish kabab with all the trimmings.
When you’ve got someone guiding you, I found it was like watered-down therapy because my natural inclination would be to beat myself up like one of Deontay Wilder’s sparring partners.
Here’s a glimpse at one of my weekends out on the booz with friends.
My newly appointed trainer, Chris, said, “Jay, I don’t mind if you drink — enjoy yourself, but just make sure you track everything.”
So I got trollied, and I kept the receipts.
Nearly 4,000 calories on a Saturday (not recommended for weight loss lol).
What was a startling revelation was the amount of money I spent every Saturday.
Between the 8 Guinness at $11, a $23 bottle of red and a $35 takeaway, it all equated to double what I paid for an online trainer monthly.
What “beers with the boys” was costing me in money was one thing, but facing my denial of being a binge drinker when it was there for me to see was, excuse the pun, sobering.
With the feedback loop of my habits staring right back at me and a third party in Chris to read it out to me and talk it over, it hit home that I was drinking too much without realising.
One unintended consequence was that I quickly turned the programme into (almost) a break-even cost once I slowed down on the drinking.
If you want to read more about my journey in depth, here are two places to tuck into the details.
1. Tiny Steps to Enormous Progress
2. How I Transformed From Clinically Obese to a Dedicated Athlete in 12
Final Thoughts.
I’m 37 years old, and my entire life, I’ve wanted to get fit and have abs.
Now I do, and it’s because I discovered how accountability with an expert significantly impacts your actions.
Getting help sits at the top of the totem pole when you want a direct route to results.
It’s unmatched.
It cost me $58 per pound of weight lost, but I actually gained lifelong strategies I can call on forever.
It’s a stark difference from me being that obese office worker who navigated blindfolded and blamed everything on my metabolism.
Before I had direction and a framework of accountability, it was a rollercoaster of eating all the wrong food, starting to train like Rocky and throwing in the towel three days later.
If you’ve struggled on your fitness journey and lacked consistency, I highly recommend you search for an online fitness trainer.
Find someone you resonate with.
Paying someone for a fair exchange in value, someone you have to show up for, someone accountable to you, and someone you get on with was my unlock to success.
It could be a significant unlock for you, too.
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