Ashley Marriott & Dr. Marc Paulsen Transcript

March 15, 2008

Kent Gustavson: Welcome back to Sound Authors. My third guest on the show is Marc Paulsen with his co-author Ashley Marriott. Their book is called “Dump Your Trainer”. Welcome to the show.

Ashley Marriott: Hi, thanks for having us.

Kent: I happen to have a personal trainer myself. Why should I dump him?

Ashley: Are you getting great results? Are you seeing what you want to see in the mirror?

Kent: Sometimes.

Ashley: Yeah, I think that’s the big question to ask. You are accountable to yourself first, and a personal trainer should be able to set up a program for you. If you’re not getting the results that you absolutely want to see, then you need to question whether it’s time to dump that trainer, or dump the whole concept of personal training.

Kent: So tell me a little bit about your backgrounds. Are one or both of you trainers yourselves?

Ashley: I am. This is Ashley Marriott, I am a personal trainer.

Kent: And Marc Paulsen, you are a doctor, correct?

Marc Paulsen: Yeah, I’m a doctor.

Kent: And you’ve teamed up to create this book “Dump Your Trainer”. Have you seen some results in your clientele and your readers?

Marc: Well Ashley, I can make a comment first and Ashley can obviously add to that. Ashley’s seen hundreds, if not thousands, of successful stories but my personal example is that I saw some incredible results.

Kent: And your personal story of weight loss started when?

Marc: It started in ‘99, late ‘99. I achieved my results, probably by around March 2000.

Kent: I know that there’s a lot surrounding weight loss. There’s the addiction properties. It’s really hot in the media, whether it’s the fast food companies. Everyone’s trying some diet, whether it’s the Krispy Kreme diet or the Not Krispy Kreme diet. Tell me a little bit about all of these fads and about the personal trainer fad and all of that.

Ashley: I think what you just brought up is the real core issue. These ideas of a “one fix”, hiring a personal trainer or this new fad diet. The big flaw is that you’re not getting to the route problem of what in your lifestyle you need to address and change to really make a lasting, life-long, sustainable, healthy lifestyle.So if you’re looking at something like hiring a personal trainer, and you don’t change any of your eating habits; you don’t modify your behavior or your emotional crutches, then you’re not going to have results, you’re going to have paid for sessions. At best you won’t get injured or hurt, but at worst you’re losing money.

Kent: Is it that easy? Your book costs $20.99, if people spring for that book is that all they need?

Marc: Well, that’s obviously a simplified form of what you really have to do. Buying the book only gives you the program that you should probably implement. In terms of seeing results, that really comes from within. That comes with consistency and staying with the program, staying with the diet and doing things that are right.

Kent: Tell me about your personal story. You helped Ashley to write this book. Tell me, what is it like, the battle of weight loss?

Marc: Well it’s tough, but it’s not as tough as you might think. OK, I was up about 60 pounds. I was up to 220, just getting to a divorce. I took a look in the mirror and I said “Oh my God. What have I got here?” So basically I said “All right. Well, you’ve got a tough schedule you have to deal with. Everybody does. OK, what are you going to do about it?”So I outlined, basically, a program, realized what my constraints were and my time limitations and all those things. Working long hours. And I said “OK, well this is what you have to work with. Do something.” That’s what it came down to. Then it came down to implementing that program and being consistent. Being consistent, staying with it.

Kent: And staying with it, is it difficult to implement?

Marc: You know it’s really not, people make it difficult. You see people go to the gym or whatever and they come in and they’re going to get it all done in a day. They’re going to lose forty pounds in a night or something like that. What they end up doing is hurting themselves or becoming discouraged.The reason is they just simply try and do too much too soon. Ashley can give you her experience, she’s seen hundreds and hundreds of people like this.

Kent: So as a personal trainer Ashley, I know from my trainer it’s a big process of working on muscle groups and doing this and that but there’s only a certain amount that you can do with someone if they don’t go home and work on the concepts themselves.

Ashley: Absolutely. And as a trainer I think there are a lot of really excellent trainers who want the best for the people they are working for, their clients. But you have to realize there is accountability on the person themselves. You have to empower, as a trainer, you have to empower that person that they only need you for a short time to give them the template and the road map.And they have to take it on themselves. And what is discouraging in the industry, that I am in, is I see that a lot of personal trainers want to keep this allure of “I am the only way, I am the only way you will achieve the results” and hold it over someone. Where really we all have to be our own lifestyle coach for the long haul. And exactly, like go home, you have to maintain your healthy lifestyle, it can’t be an hour at the gym and that’s it.

Kent: Let’s say I go into the store or I go to your website dumptyourtrainer.com, I buy your book. What happens?

Ashley: Well everything in the book it is basically a template of how to make the changes you need to make. To create a lifestyle that is healthy and really moderately. It’s not for an extreme athlete. It’s not for someone who is wanting to be the next bodybuilder.But it’s a healthy lifestyle to follow. You have to do the work. You have to count calories. You have to exercise. You have to move. And those are things that always take time and energy. But if you get the leverage from reading the book and you get the feeling that it is time for me to make this change. It gives you the template to do it.And there is a lot of tools in the book that help give that extra push. Motivational tools and also self-fitness tracking which is so important. I’m sure your trainer when you started with them, they did a fitness assessment. It gives you good motivation to go “OK day one, I’m here. Where do I want to be day thirty, day sixty, day ninety.”

Kent: Here’s a question for you, I have a great trainer, but the thing about it is that when I started training he built me up so much that I felt I was on the path to becoming a body builder. As opposed to what I wanted to be, which was a healthy human being.

Marc: Absolutely.

Kent: What extent do you look at that as a trainer or as a trainee?Marc. : This is really important. Because you need to prepare yourself for the lifestyle you are going to lead. If you are going to be a furniture mover. Or you are going to do something like that, then sure you need to bulk up and get all those muscles on there.But if you are not going to maintain that throughout life then that is only going to come back on you. You need to say to yourself, “What is it that I really want to be?” And not, “What is it that they want me to be?” Once you’ve decided that then you can set your own course. You can set your own pace and you can set your own goal.

Kent: Has it worked for you, how long have you kept this weight off?

Marc: Nine years now. I went from 220 down to 160 and I’m that today. In fact people can verify that we were on ABC TV on the 18th of February. We’ll be on CBS and NBC coming up on the 24th and the 26th and I’ll be there in plain sight.[laughter]

Marc: In addition, I have some before and after photos on the website as well.

Kent: Exactly, if we’re listening to the radio, we can check you out at dumpyourtrainer.com. Well this has been a real pleasure, I definitely need to read this book. I haven’t had the benefit of doing that yet. You should send me a copy. But it sounds like a wonderful concept, I hope that “Dump Your Trainer” does really well in the future. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Ashley: It’s a pleasure, thank you so much.

Marc: Thank you.

Kent: And we’ll go to dumpyourtrainer.com to find out much more. Come on back in one second we’re going to be chatting with Mike Marshall. A guru of the mandolin, guitar, anything with strings. We’ll chat with him about his newest album which has some roots in Sweden.

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