[kitkatbahr]

Has anyone decided to pursue a career as a Personal Trainer (or some other certification in this field) as a result of working on getting themselves healthy and then deciding to do it as a career to, to help others?

I have been interested in becoming a personal trainer and have been looking into the different certifications, etc. Currently, I feel I am still too "fat" to actually be one, cause who would believe that I was? LOL But, as part of my journy to health, I want to possibly pursue this avenue as well. I may or may not do anything with it (I don't need to work, thankfully, and I have lots of health issues right now that would make working hard. I am hoping some of these issues will resolve as I lose more weight) but if I ever wanted or needed to work, it would be something to have.

The biggest PLUS I can see with this, besides that I have a natural interest in it and in helping other people like me, is that becoming a personal trainer would be a HUGE motivating factor to continue on my journey of getting healthy. I could learn so much!

I was just curious if anyone else has gone down this road and become a personal trainer after deciding to get themselves healthy. At one time in my life I would NEVER have considered doing this!

Another reason I am interested in doing this is that I have fibromyalgia, bone spurs, plantars fascitis, two bulging discs in my lower back L4 and L5. I also just had knee surgery three weeks ago. I feel like if I don't DO something with my health and life in a positive way, then I am going to slip off the deep end of obesity and live a life of misery and of being unhealthy. I don't want to go there. I would much rather contune on my journey of trying to lose weight, get healthy and change my lifestyle.

I have lost a good bit of weight the past few years. But, with different medicines I have been on, it has been a challenge. I ended up gaining weight again last year back up almost to 265 while on Cymbalta for the fibro. Almost 35 lbs! But, thankfully, in the last few months, I have lost most of that weight again. I am now down to 233 lbs. Almost to my lowest weight I can remember which was 228 lbs. My highest weight was 285 lbs which was 7 years ago. I had one child during that marriage, in 1993, and just continued to gain weight after that. I never lost the baby weight. I didn't start losing weight until after I left my first husband. When he and I got married, I think I weighd about 145 and was a size 10 in my wedding dress. That was in 1986. I started gaining weight almost immediately from there and got all the way to 285 lbs before I realized I was killing myself!! that was in 2000. By 2003, I had gotten down to 245 and stayed there for awhile. Found a new love, got remarried, etc. Then gradually lost down to 228 before having lots of pain and problems with fibro. The doc tried different meds with the only result being weight gain. I finally gave up all my meds, except Tramadol (Ultram) and sometimes Skelaxin, a muscle relaxer. Now I am fighting my way back down the chart.

I have had many, many health challenges these last two years. It has been very difficult to lose weight by exercising, so I mostly just changed my eating habits and tried to eat as good as I could, and exercise when I felt good enough or was able to. At least the weight gain I had wasn't due to any bad habits. It was from meds. Now that those meds are gone, I am hoping to keep on losing. I would love to rejoin my Tae Kwon Do school. I had gotten all the way to camoflauge belt before I had to quit completely, due to health issues.

I am currently laid up due to knee surgery. I will be on crutches for 3 more weeks. After that, I hope I will be released from my doctor to start exercising a bit more than I can now. It will be a long, slow process. I am scared to death I will re-injure/damage the knee again. I know that weight loss will help all of my problems. I will feel better all over, just from losing some of this baggage.

I believe that studying to be a personal trainer will be an affirmation of sorts for me. I want to be able to help other people like me, especially, those that face many health challenges. I want to help them. Teach them to not give up. That every little bit of positive will counteract any of the negatives that we battle with on a daily basis.

Sorry this post is so long. I was just curious if anyone else did what I am going to do? Any personal trainers out there?

Thanks.
kathy