4 Things Every Fitness Trainer Friend Wishes You Knew

We love being fitness trainers! Seeing clients do things they once thought impossible is such an awesome feeling. It is amazing when people embrace healthier living, and we love celebrating that each journey is unique. 

What’s always interesting to Meg and me is how other people interact with us when they find out we are fitness trainers. I vividly remember walking up to a buffet at a work event - it was like a police raid at a high school party. People practically dropped their plates and ran. The less fortunate ones, who were too slow to dodge their way out of the line, were left to share a flood of excuses, “Oh, this isn’t my plate! I’m getting this for my husband.” 

I remember hearing my pastor say that when he initially meets people, it is interesting how the coversation turns after they ask what he does for a living. Well, believe it or not, we often experience a similar response. Once someone finds out we are fitness trainers there is a shift in the conversation…which usually ends in one of two directions. One is reminiscent of a confessional revealing everything from missed workouts to bad eating habits, or it can turn into a Q and A answering question after fitness question.  

Here are a few things your fitness training friends wish you knew, but don’t tell you!

We Aren’t Judging What You Are Eating

Meg and I experience this all the time. When we are out to eat with our children’s sports teams or at dinner with friends, people assume we are judging what they eat. How do we know this? They make excuses for everything they order and give us guilty glances as they say “I know I shouldn’t get this but…”. 

Listen, we don’t care what you eat! That’s the truth. I promise that am not judging your food selections; to be honest, I am not even paying attention to what you are ordering. Trust me, I am indecisive and just trying to decide what to order for myself, I can’t pay attention to what you are ordering. So please feel free to eat whatever you want without any judgment on my part.  

Please Don’t Judge What We Are Eating

Interestingly, in our experience, others DO make judgments on our food selections and have no trouble commenting about them. I mean they have NO problem at all commenting.  

Let’s make a deal…we won’t pay any attention to what you are eating, and we’d love it if you could do the same for us. We all have different styles of eating - that’s ok! You eat the foods that fuel your body and we will do the same. They may not be the same types of foods, but again that’s ok!  

I can’t tell you how often we hear comments about what we are eating. For instance, we take an apple to a game and someone says “Oh, of course she’s eating an apple.” Or when we order food at the restaurant and ask for a salad with no dressing the response is, “Yuck, who eats a salad with no dressing? What’s wrong with dressing?” As crazy as it sounds, we enjoy the taste of the salad, and we don’t want dressing.  

Just as people feel self-conscious about not ordering “healthy” foods around us, we feel self-conscious about ordering our meals too. Help a trainer out and ignore what we eat - we would appreciate it more than you know! 

We Can Talk About Other Things Beside Fitness and Nutrition

While we love talking about fitness and working out, we do it all day, so we appreciate the time to talk about other things too. Luckily for you, most people probably don’t consider themselves an expert in your profession, so they rarely sit and talk to you about computer programing or the channel distribution struggles facing your company. When you go out to dinner with friends, the discussion around your work is likely limited to generic questions about how things are going, and the conversation moves on.

Fitness and nutrition on the other hand, is a topic everyone has an opinion which they are usually pretty passionate about, so it ends up being a significant part of our conversation. We hit everything from different workouts, or a new eating style they love, to what kind of shoes we recommend for running. Sometimes, after I return home from a night out with friends, I realize the only thing we talked about was fitness and nutrition. I get why it happens though - fitness is a stress reliever for most people and something they are really excited about, so it is understandable that our friends and acquaintances like sharing their thoughts about fitness with us. 

We have many other interests: decorating, current events, entertainment news, gardening, and books. There are so many other topics we can chat about. While Meg can throw around some pretty significant weights, she can also work a circular saw like a pro! She redesigned her entire kitchen cabinets with Facebook Marketplace finds - that is a conversation worth having. I love my outdoor pots and I have a secret weapon that makes watering once a week possible - also a conversation worth having! And don’t get me started on Real Housewives, I have lots to say about that matter (while not as impressive as Meg's wood working skills, I do possess an embarassingly thorough expanse of knowledge on the subject)!  

So feel free to jump into a variety of conversation topics with your fitness training friends - they will appreciate it!  

Please Stop Trying to Convince Us that Your Workouts or Eating Styles Are the Best 

Here is the thing, there are hundreds of ways to stay active and hundreds of ways to fuel your body - you have to do what works for you. That means focusing on the workouts and eating styles you can maintain for the duration. Meg and I have found what works for us, and we are 110 % “all in” with how we work out and fuel our bodies. We train people who share the same desires as we do.  

We understand that what you are doing works best for you, and we are genuinely happy that you have found a gym or eating style that you love, but please don’t continually try to get us to try what you are doing. You wouldn’t go into the Honda dealership every couple of days and try to convince them to test drive a Toyota because you love yours. Well, it’s kind of what it’s like when people are constantly talking to us about trying their new diet or doing the latest gym craze. For example, you will never convince us that carbs are bad - we are firm believers in the health benefits of complex carbs and we will always eat whole grains, beans, and fiber rich foods. We love that you are a fan of Barry’s Bootcamp, but it’s not what we do, and we will stick to our workouts (if you’d like my experience with Barry’s Bootcamp you can check it out here). 

Keep in mind - you can find an expert that supports whatever style of eating or workout you want. One person says only plant-based eating will help you stay healthy, another intermittent fasting, and another says that keto diet is the key. You have to follow what you believe and we will do the same! There is not one right answer. We celebrate your healthy lifestyle choices right along with you…but we may not try each one of them - we have our own thing we love.

Go Out and Have Fun! 

Enjoy a night out with your trainer friends eating and drinking whatever you want, knowing you are free from any judgment on their part, and we will enjoy doing the same. We can feel free to chat about any topic under the sun, except maybe politics and religion (wink), and we can even chat a little about fitness too! In this post-covid era that has created such fragmented social interaction, we are so thankful for gathering with our community of friends - what better boost for both mental health and physical health than laughing with your buddies!