The Fitness by Phone® system is simple.

1. I get a complete assessment from you of where you are now health wise. How much exercise you do, or not. What you eat and how often. Any injuries old or new. Accidents you forgot about when younger? Illnesses chronic or otherwise.

Because I need a complete picture of who you are before I can customise a system just for you. 

2. I get your doctors permission to help you get fit. There may be some caveats that we have to work with, and that is great. Good doctors want healthy patients, and generally work with me to get the safest and best result we can for you. 

3. I send you the Fitness by Phone starter kit. It contains your Caltrac energy use feedback unit, Polar Heart Rate monitor, pinch test calipers to see how much body fat you are burning, the Un-diet CD (you'll love this) and the health and fitness diaries.

4. During the first consultation we go through your health assessment, address any issues, teach you how to do skin fold tests (and do them). I then teach you how to set up and use your Caltrac, and we set up a baseline for more physical movement than you do now. For instance if you currently don't see yourself as an exerciser, and have limited movement capabilities we start really slowly.

As an example one client, Viv, was recovering from back surgery. She started by standing next to a wall in a tall posture for 10 seconds, which was all she could handle pain wise. Now 12 months later, Viv commonly does a gym workout of about 90 minutes twice a week, plus a lot of walking. You also learn how to use the diaries so you can check on progress week by week.

5. The next consultation we review what you have done, and set new goals. The immediate feedback you get from the Caltrac is highly motivating. We do not set a goal higher than you think you can achieve with just a little more effort than you did the previous week. Progress is incremental but you can see it.

6. Once you can prove to me that you will do what we have set out to do each week, I move you into Heart Rate workouts and teach you how to use the Polar monitor in a number of small easy steps. By now (about the 6th week) you will notice a real difference in the way you feel, the way you look, and the way you think about yourself.

7. About the 8th week or sooner if you are responding well, I start you on strength workouts - just a couple of exercises first that you can do with just your own body weight. All strength work is progressive, there are ways to "cheat" that will get your muscles working again no matter how flaccid or weak they seem ... This is the only way to prevent or reverse osteoporosis, and you'll have to learn to like it.

8. It's week 16. By now you should have the motivation to stick with your program, the confidence and knowledge to do the right thing, the tools and the ingrained habits to carry you on forever. Sometimes it takes a bit longer. Typically clients are ready to go it alone between week 16 and week 26.

And this is the whole point of Fitness by Phone®. To make you an independent health fitness coach to yourself.