Trying it alone
Before ATP, Amy trained on her own. She strength trained, she ran, and she followed YouTube workouts and exercises she found online, fitted around a marketing job and two teenagers. She didn’t see any results.
I was exercising on my own for about a year, just watching YouTube videos and googling whatever exercises I wanted. There was really no structure. I felt like there wasn’t a proper programme, so I couldn’t really see any results.
With no way of knowing whether any of her efforts were working, it became easier to skip sessions and indulge in food. “There was a lot of frustration because I felt like I wasn’t seeing results,” she says, “and that resulted in less motivation to stay consistent.”
Amy then spent several months researching and comparing coaches before she signed up. By the time she did, she had spent twelve months getting nowhere.
Once I signed up, I locked in completely. My coach has been amazing. He worked with me to set up my goals.
The first two weeks were easy
The first two weeks? It was easy. I just turned up to the gym twice a week and followed my coach’s instructions.
She was training just twice per week, less than she had been doing on her own. The difference was that the sessions were tailored to her, designed ahead of time and carefully recorded. For Amy the training was the easy part.
The diet was the tougher part, because I was really trying to hit my protein goal while staying within my calorie deficit.
What got her through it was feedback. She weighed in almost every morning, 132 entries over the programme, so she and her coach could see within a week whether the food was working and adjust it. Once the scale started moving, the diet stopped feeling like a gamble.
Not just leaner but stronger
Around week six she was stronger each session and “really energised to keep up with the pace and demands at work”.
I was pleasantly surprised at how strong I actually became after each session, and that felt really good.
Twenty weeks of personal training, measured
At 53.9kg, nobody would have told Amy to lose weight. She arrived asking to get her body fat under 20%, and the first caliper reading put her at 25.4%.
By week twelve she was 49.5kg and 19.1%, under the 20% she had asked for. She kept going. The goal she set in her training app was 48kg by 18 August; she weighed 47.8kg that morning.
- Weight: 53.9kg to 47.2kg, down 6.7kg
- Body fat: 25.4% to 16.8%, down 8.6 points, by skinfold calipers
- Weigh-ins logged: 132 in 20 weeks
What she knows now
Asked what she got wrong, she doesn’t mention exercises.
I thought I needed to know everything about nutrition and exercise, but in reality I just needed to show up, take it one day at a time, trust the process, and be consistent.
She spent a year collecting information. Her first twelve weeks on a programme produced more than that year did.
I lost 7kg. My body fat went from 26% to 17% in 20 weeks. I’m really grateful, really excited, and I’m in the best shape of my life.
If you have been training on your own for a year and can’t see the difference, the missing piece is probably not information. Start by finding out your numbers.
Coached at ATP Personal Training Singapore
