When I hit 200 pounds in 2001, I realized I had to do something. I hadn’t been to the gym in months, I was very out of shape and wondering if I could ever get back to my normal body tone. Not only that, but I was physically down, totally without energy and not really motivated.
I went to Mike Everts because he was a good friend and I knew he had expertise in fitness training. Instead of feeding me the usual lines about fitness, he set me down and gave me his philosophy. I had bad lifestyle habits that I had to break, and I had to get myself back into the gym. He immediately put me on a very strict diet and put me on the treadmill to get my metabolism back from the dead. We did no lifting at all to begin with, just running and some abdominal crunches.
Most importantly, he asked me to trust him, just at least for two weeks, and he promised me that at the end of the two weeks I’d be very motivated and I’d feel completely different. Well, I stuck with the strict diet for two weeks, and was up to running 2 miles three times a week by the end of the second week, and doing 100 crunches after each run. He was completely right. By the start of week three I’d lost almost 10 pounds, I was sleeping better, I was exploding with energy, and I could feel real results coming. So naturally, I was totally motivated — and we moved to the next step right away. We started toning target muscle groups, balancing things evenly. I see too many guys with huge arms — and huge guts — and with Mike’s philosophy it’s all about balanced health and fitness, with the goal of being healthy and getting your metabolism to a stage where you can easily direct your work out to whatever you want or need. In all, I lost 16 pounds in the first month, and lost a total of 30 pounds within two and a half months. I was k to a normal diet very quickly — and with Mike’s instruction I began to instinctively know what my body wanted and when, and could easy regulate myself without ever feeling like I was “on a diet.” I was soon running three miles four times a week, adding leg lifts to the crunches and getting some ab definition for the first time in my life, and Mike taught me a lot about how to tone each muscle group. With my metabolism flying, I continued to lose weight and add tone, and I was sleeping deeply on a regular routine, getting more things done at work, had a clearer mind and a very positive outlook on life. In short, Mike Everts finally made me understand my body, and what fitness is really about.