When I started Tall Trainer about a year ago, I was at the saddest place that I can remember.

I was overweight, depressed and tired, and I didn't know how to turn things around.

I decided to try a Saturday class with my mom. It was hard but I knew if I did that on a regular basis, my life would be different!

Thankfully, there was room in the 7am class and I started!

I have learned SO much! I have changed the way I eat and many other areas of my lifestyle. I did discover that I can not eat gluten, at all, and that has also changed my cooking and eating habits greatly.

I love the workouts, the support of the trainers and the other people in my class. I feel like everyone there is 100% FOR me and wants me to succeed as much as I do.

I am so grateful for everything that Tall Trainer has done for me and helping me turn things around!

Don W. Hood known by most as “Coach Hood”. 

Born: April 6^th 1933

Died: Feb 9^th 2024

For those who don't know Coach Hood has coached dozens of olympians and national champions in pole vaulting over decades of coaching.  

The first time I met Coach Hood was when he came up north for his world class pole vaulting camps.  I remember him talking about the catered meals = Subway, burgers, and Pizza.  I remember sleeping in a college dorm or motel.  I remember carrying kids to and from locations in the back of pickup trucks.  I remember him telling everyone to buy a T-shirt but only wear it at home if they weren’t going to do things right on the runway.  I remember him calling flip flops thongs and that getting a giggle out of the kids.   I remember working hard to make sure I wasn’t a “rock head”.  He could coach hard and direct and still not crush people.  He made me think higher of myself...

Meet Cara! She is one amazing girl who has transformed her life! We are super proud of her! Read and be inspired!! She has lost even a little more from this picture and gained more muscle!! . Change IS possible!

Where did you come from, your starting fitness and nutrition level?

 Prior to starting Tall Trainer in June 2023, I did not focus on my nutrition at all. I did not pay attention to portion sizes, snacked multiple times throughout the day, and enjoyed sweets way too much! As for my fitness, I had previously ran multiple 5ks and completed runs 1-3 times a week. I would complete spin classes at home too throughout 2020-2021. I lost my motivation though and began 2023 with minimal physical activity (maybe once a week).

What inspired you to start?

I followed Tall Trainer on social media for a while and always wondered what their classes were like; however, I didn’t think I had enough time to focus on me. I lacked motivation. I was gaining weight, lost my...

Recently we offered a 10-pound weight loss challenge.  This is where you had 30 days to lose 10 pounds.  We know that this isn’t always feasible or even necessary to reach your goals.  But sometimes we need a kick in the pants to get up and take action.  We need to prove to ourselves that results are possible.  We need to see some real change so that the momentum can get rolling.  And WOWZA it did get rolling. 

We had 14 people successfully lose 10 pounds in that time frame!  For some of these folks that was their final 10 pound to be at their goal!!!!  Many of these people have been working on weight loss for some time and took the extra push.  Some had starting to let some weight creep back on and wanted to get back to their happy spot.

Other cool things that happened.  We had 26 people on TOP of the 14 loose over 4 pounds.  Some of them were not even going for the challenge. 

Almost...

Sometimes I don’t even know what I like to do anymore.  I get caught up in the busyness of the day and my “to do” list that I don’t even once think about myself.   I am a doer.  I like to be busy and have projects going.  Somewhere along the line my worth got caught up in being measured by how much I can get done.  This gets out of hand often and I forget to give myself permission to rest and just be me.  

For a long time (and still sometimes) I was very uncomfortable with not being busy.  When I was just plain exhausted and wanted to stop “doing” the only thing I would give myself permission to do was eat.  Somehow this didn’t make me feel guilty about not producing something or doing something because eating was a necessity.  But I wasn’t eating healthful things, I was eating foods to numb my unsettled feelings.

Turns out I am not alone in this.  We asked our clients...

I’m 21 now.

Ok, not really.  I’m 43. 

It dawned on me the other day that I have maintained around a 60ish-pound weight loss for over 21 years. 

“Looking at the statistics -from a Harvard  meta-analysis of 29 long-term weight loss studies, more than half of the lost weight was regained within two years, and by five years more than 80% of lost weight was regained. This means that based on our best estimates, only one in five individuals who is overweight is successful in long-term weight loss”.

Super quick backstory, at 14 I was diagnosed with anorexia which then merged into bulimia and about every other eating disorder in the book.  I went from 89 pounds to 189 pounds in a short period of time in my initial “recovery”. 

189-pound Sarah had a lot of crap to sort out to not turn to extremely harming behaviors to lose weight. 

This process was NOT smooth. ...

Every year we run a food drive around this time of the year.  It's a lower resource time for food pantries so we try to help out.  We make it a little fun by weighing the food in and keeping score.  I am blown away by the generosity if our groups and impressed with their competitiveness.  

We beat last years total of 3,622 pounds with a new Tall Trainer World Record 4,667!!!! over 1,000 pounds over last year!  That's a huge amount of food for the number of people it's nearly 40 pounds donated per person!  Here's about 1/2 of my heros!  (the others didn't make it for the photo)

5:10 class lead the way for awhile with team captain Kay who out did herself this year!  She had SOOO much fun!  5:10 broke the single class donation record with 1,220.6 pounds!  Then the 9 am class pulled ahead on the last day with the new record of 1,356.2 pounds donated by a single class.  We even had Susan stop by all dressed up even though she...

Watch this funny 1 minute video and get a great reminder!

I’m known for being positive and smiley every day.  So, what wipes the smile off my face?

Notes like this:

“Unfortunately, due to his body fighting him in several locations and his love of food, it was a downward spiral of losing the mobility to do the exercises he really loved, skiing and mountain biking, plus the comfort his love of food brought him that sadly ended in losing him to a heart attack in September.” 

I asked her if I could share this message with others and she said please, if her husband’s story could reach one person and help them it would "be awesome." 

Because stories like these become more real when you see the people here is Heather and Bobby…just a couple kids. 

It’s not right.  Bobby was about 55 years old and should have had 20 - 30 more “good” years.  I am not blaming him.  He was a good man.  Actually, probably a great man from...