Tom Rutherford on Meal Planning and Fitness

What drives you to start this online meal and workout planning company?

I was driven to start Truth Contest Prep as an extension of my personal training and meal planning services that I provide to people in and near the Dallas, Texas area. I have a BS degree in Special Education and am currently certified through WITS as a personal trainer.

Training professionally for over 16 years I have come to realize that I might only be able to service 10-15 personal training clients a day if choosing not to teach boot-camps. The main reason that a few my clients didn’t get the best results is usually because of their food consumption. There is no doubt that helping people with their diet is the key to physique modification…what’s the old adage “diet is 70% of it”?

I speak with world wide clients virtually via Skype or telephone which allows us to work as a team to build them their personalized workout and nutrition plan. It is true for myself, clients looking for a healthier lifestyle, all the way to my client looking to compete in a body building show that having a PLAN is step one to success.

I have found that I can help people for an entire month, with nutritional plans (which is the majority of success) and exercise recommendations, for the price of two or three training sessions. The fact nutritional habits being such a large portion of body modification and the addition of a 30 day workout plan with accompanied videos allow me to show people what I mean visually when I write certain terms in their recommended and personalized plans.

What evaluations do you conduct on a new client who wants to begin a fitness regimen?

New clients and I, whether in person or otherwise, spend about a half an hour talking about:

Their specific goals, current health conditions, previous success and failure and the reasons why, what previous experience with meal and workout planning do they have, injuries, medications, support structure, dietary concerns, time results are anticipated.

If I can meet with the client in person I have the same conversation, but I am also able to do a nine point caliper test, girth measurements, and before and after pictures if the client feels comfortable. I get exact body fat and lean mass. It is very important for us to get these measurements to be able to measure when things are changing other than just through scale weight.

My people that cannot come to see me I have them purchase an affordable bio impedance scale by Tanida and they can weigh and measure every morning.

After about two days I have written the meal and workout plan according to all of the measurements and information collected . The personalized meal plan created for you is broken down hour by hour, gram of food by gram of food, even videos how to cook the meals are included.

The workout plan is day by day, exercise by exercise, with attached videos. I am open to telephone calls 9 AM – 9 PM; email and text until the early morning hours.

How does a workout routine differ from someone who is over 60 compared to someone younger?

People over 60 years old main concern is quality of life. That includes being able to do the things that they want to do like travel, shop, and interact with grandchildren. The main ideas that are focused on for my mature clients are balance, mobility, flexibility, cardio respiratory health, bone density, muscular atrophy prevention, as well as in many cases mild physical therapy techniques.

I had a client Chuck who loved to bench press and dead lift. At the age of 68 years old he was benching 155lbs flat bench with no spot! “Tom, that’s more than I ever benched before—even more than when I was in Korea in the 50’s”. To each their own! As a trainer and a lover of excitement and passion; if my client wants to get motivated to be extra ordinary its my duty to guide them there safely and healthily.

My clients under 50 are of coarse going to get all of the same wanted results of healthy older clients, but they also have the ability to build more shape and tone if they are choosing to.

My young men and women wanna get “huge or shredded” for the most part; especially my competition minded ones. My 30 something’s want to lose the 20lb gut they got from working behind a desk since college. The House Mom’s in their 40’s wanna look as good on the outside as they do on the inside and mainly point to their stomach and rear as problem areas.

People no matter their age have to have a “why” for them to be successful. Doing this exercise and health coaching for years, I have found people with a plan, a support structure, and a real “why” they are doing this, tend to me more successful. Reading every blog, mag, and book about health and nutrition is overwhelming to everyone, and drives most to quit.

That’s what I do consolidate that’s hurricane of info into a nice neat little package. When my older people who want to make a health change don’t have accountability to anyone for years (other than to their boss for work), single or with an unmotivated spouse, the two main things they crave are accountability and direction.

Why is eating healthy important? Any healthy nutrition ideas that you can recommend to people?

How your body processes sugar is the biggest reason that we have different body types. Some are thin meaning that they process sugar quickly. Other people are thick , heavy, or “big boned” and process sugar found in foods very slowly. With this being known I always have my people start their day with a low sugar breakfast but one that does have some carbohydrates for energy.

*Good example– one whole egg, three egg whites, two slices turkey bacon, and a pack of low sugar oats (slow digesting carbs found in oats and high protein)

*Bad example—four cups of frozen fruit with vitamin d milk blended up for breakfast (whhoooaa! That’s a lot of sugar and cals for just the few grams of protein found in the milk).

Also I enjoy recommending people to keep the majority of their carbohydrates around their exercise times; pre, intra (during the workout), and post. To fill, replace, and then replenish glycogen stores in the body with the carbs with no spill over of sugars at night that has the ability to spill to fat.

If you could leave our readers with one last piece of business advice, what would it be?

Allow open communication, all but force open communication to clients. With clients being able to communicate with you about your service or product you can handle issues as they arise allowing you to be a more proactive business owner.

Use social media and learn search engine optimization strategies that allow you to be in millions of places at once—don’t forget to use them! Be a positive person at all times because it’s a small world baby and ya never know who’s uncle you might be talking to.