A lot of people have a tough time accepting the fact that personal trainers charge a lot of money per hour. Highly experienced and qualified personal trainers can cost a mint. In fact, top celebrity trainers come with quite a bit of sticker shock. Some trainers charge upwards of several hundreds of dollars per hour.
You are probably thinking, “What justifies the huge amount of money for this type of personal service.” It may seem like a lot of money now, but believe it or not, you might end up paying more in the long run if you don’t get this type of training. As hard as this training may be on your finances right now, your expenses in the future might actually be more crushing. Here are the reasons why.
1. You pay in the form of hospitalization bills.
When you get sick due to high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer or any other kind of lifestyle related, chronic illness; your hospitalization bills will be quite high. The reason for this is that those chronic illnesses would require you to spend some time to be hospitalized. You keep going back to the hospital. This is especially true, if you develop a stroke or some sort of cardiovascular disease. This is bad news because you are not only hospitalized, but your overall health degrades. You are no longer able to do the things that you used to do easily. Even walking around the block can be a problem.
2. Medication, maintenance bills
If you refuse to work out and get fit here and now, look forward to possibly high maintenance medication bills in the future. If you have a high blood pressure or any sort of cardiovascular disease, you need to take drugs on a consistent basis just to keep on top of that medical condition. If you don’t take your maintenance medication, you might develop a stroke, suffer a heart attack and all sorts of health emergencies might happen to you. This is why it’s much better to skip all of that and work on your health. Eat more vegetables. Get daily exercise. Adapt some sort of mindfulness practice. That way, you can make sure your mind, emotions and body are healthy. Imagine the thousands or hundred thousands of dollars you would be saving.
3. You pay in the form of chronically reduced health
Even if you are “healthy”, your overall health can still degrade due to diabetes or lifestyle diseases like obesity. These are not simple inconveniences. You would be living life at a far reduced level. For example, you might have limited range of motion. You might also tire very easily. You might feel certain physical activities are off limits to you. Also, traveling might be a problem. Instead of living life to the fullest and living life with a full sense of possibility, you tend to live life with very strict limitations. Unfortunately, as you get older your comfort zone starts to shrink and you feel less capable of doing things.
4. You pay in the form of emotional limitations
The worst aspect of bad health has little to do with your physical limitations. While your physical limitations are the most visible limitations on your health, the more crucial deterioration of a person’s health takes place in the realm of the emotions. You feel like less of a person when you are sick. You feel that there’s not that much use to you. You feel like you lose a lot of your initial curiosity and sense of adventure.
While you may be in your thirty’s or forty’s, you feel like you’re twice as old. This can make you susceptible to depression and anxiety. There have been clinical studies that show people who have reduced health level, suffer from a wide range of emotional ailment.
Given the miracles of modern medicine, most Americans can look forward to at least 80 years on this planet. Unfortunately, a lot of people start developing all sorts of health ailments way before that. As early as 30 years old, a lot of people are developing heart, organ and hormonal issues due to lifestyle choices.
If you don’t pay a personal trainer to whip you into shape by helping you eat better and exercise, you end up suffering at many different levels. You pay in the form of diminished life outlook. You have a more depressed outlook regarding life. You tend to develop low self-esteem and low self-confidence. When you were younger, the whole world was wide open to you and everything was possible. Now you feel that everything takes too much work and it’s too expensive. You become very pessimistic and it seems that the world is closing on you. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Your mind and body are interconnected. When your body suffers, your mind starts to suffer as well. When your mind suffers, it also leads to the degradation of your body. You feel that you really can’t go past a certain point. You feel that certain activities are really not worth the bother. This leads to some sort of downward spiral where the more physically limited you feel, the more limited you are emotionally and mentally. Feeling really bad about your personal capabilities, impacts your physical capabilities. This impacts your cost because it takes money to get psychiatric care. It takes money to go on anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications.
It may seem like you are paying through the nose for a personal trainer now. It may seem that you are paying too much of your hard earned dollars for physical training. However, do yourself a favor. Invest in yourself. You are not just investing in the health of your body, but you are also investing on your emotional health and overall well-being. If anything, you are building a healthier personal outlook regarding your own personal capabilities and capacities. Pay that money now. You will thank yourself for it later.
by Matt Hanson, Las Vegas Personal Trainer, Nutritionist and Functional Medicine Health Coach