There are few things as frustrating as working out faithfully and not seeing the results you need, or even the progress you were making when you started. A personal trainer might be just what you need.
There are generally two reasons that you'll stop seeing results from your workouts: either you're doing the wrong things or you're still doing the things that were right a month ago but aren't anymore. Either way, spending your time and energy on workouts that aren't working out is frustrating, disappointing, and can really kill your motivation. It's also a waste of time and money.
Doing All the Wrong Things for All the Right Reasons
One of the problems many people face when working out on their own is that they have a limited knowledge of what they need to do to achieve their goals. Knowing that you should get some cardio in and do some resistance training isn't enough to help you come up with an effective plan to reach those goals. Any increase in physical activity will probably help you to lose a little weight in the beginning, but you need a real plan to get you the results you're hoping for. All cardio is not created equal and there is a science to weight training.
If you've started working out on your own with a "hoping this works" type of approach, you're not alone and you shouldn't feel like you've failed if your progress has stopped dead. You've taken the initiative and made positive changes that impact your overall health and wellbeing. Those are real achievements and you should celebrate them. You deserve to succeed; hiring a professional could be the catalyst that gets you where you want to be.
Doing the Same Right Things for Too Long
On the other hand, maybe your problem isn't that you don't know what to do, but that you don't know when to stop. If you've been working out for any length of time or if you've ever read a fitness magazine in your lifetime, you're familiar with the dreaded "plateau". No one wants to hop onto the scale or look into the mirror and see that progress has suddenly come to a standstill, but almost everyone will.
The key to continued, steady progress in your fitness is changing up what you do often enough to keep your muscles and your metabolism guessing. Our bodies are keenly adaptable mechanisms and once your body adapts to the work you demand of it, your workout becomes less effective or not effective at all.
One of the great things about having a personal trainer is that a skilled trainer not only knows how to design a program that suits your goals, but also when to move on to another plan. This means that you're far less likely to have to deal with plateaus.
You're investing time, motivation, energy, and money into your health and your fitness. You need to get the best results that you can and you need to get them safely and steadily. Having a personal trainer's knowledge and expertise at your disposal is one of the best ways to do that.
