"I have always had a hectic work schedule. Working long hours in the corporate arena, I ran through fast food drive thru's and relied on take out for meals. When I started working from home in June of 2007, things went from crazy to ridiculous. I found myself with poor eating habits, no activity, and started going crazy staring at the four walls of my home office. I was also gaining more and more weight since my job was now sedentary 100% of the time. There were no more meetings to walk to, no more stairs to climb, no parking lots to lug through at work, etc. Something had to give, so I came to Optimal to see what they had to offer.
When I came to see the gym I brought my sister with me. She is a chiropractor and a former health and fitness coordinator. She helped me evaluate the facilities, the equipment, the programs offered, and the staff. I joined Optimal on the spot. Immediately after signing up, Chris, one of the expert trainers, was pushing me to schedule my first orientation appointment. That is exactly what I needed to avoid putting it off! He got me started and committed right away. I signed up for the promo pack for personal training sessions too. Chris counseled me on exercise, showed me how to use each piece of equipment correctly and safely, and also evaluated my diet and made recommendations. Chris tailored exercise programs to match my level of fitness yet gave me challenges to help me to progress to the next level of training. I signed up with Optimal in late August; it is now the end of January and together with my trainer, my new diet and exercise regimen, and my own discipline and efforts, I have lost 78 pounds. I am now committed to this new lifestyle of health and fitness. Not only do I look better and feel better, my health has never been better. Having had borderline high blood pressure readings and seriously high cholesterol, my pressure is now perfect and my cholesterol is 172. I could not have made this kind of progress without Chris and without the support and encouragement of the Optimal owners, staff, and clients. A few weeks ago, I even started taking spin class! I went from being a total health disaster to being a stronger, healthier, and more confident person. I am hooked and Optimal delivers!"
- Robbin 41
The summer of 2006 I was a little over 330 lb. and getting bigger all the time. My doctor had been telling me for a while that I was borderline diabetic. My blood pressure was high and I had to be put on pressure medicine. My cholesterol was also high. I decided to do something about it by working out at a gym. I wasn’t getting any results at the gym I was going to when I got a letter from Optimal; it was called Pennsport then, to return to the club. After I rejoined the club I talked to them about a trainer to help me. They told me that they had one that was also a nutritionist and I told them that was perfect because that was what I needed too. In October 2006 I started training with Gabrielle Sigal. At first I couldn’t do much. I would lose my breath easy, but over time it got better. My doctor told me to consider my self diabetic and to come in for blood tests every 3 months. As I continued to work with Gabrielle I started to feel better. The biggest changes happened when I actually started to listen to Gabrielle about what to eat and what to stay away from. When I did that my blood test results started getting better and I started seeing a lot more weight come off. My last 2 sets of blood test results have come back as normal all around. My doctor was extremely happy. So far I have lost over 90 lbs. with Gabrielle. I recently started working with another trainer also, Maureen Shannon. The two of them have different types of workouts so my body doesn’t get used to one type. I don’t get bored with my workouts because Gabrielle always changes it so I never have the same one.
Before I started training at Optimal Gym with Gabrielle and Maureen I had trained with three other trainers at different clubs but I never got the results that I got here.
Before I started working out with Gabrielle I was headed for a massive heart attack. I have had a couple of people, including family members; tell me that Gabrielle saved my life.
- Rick Stechman