The obesity rates are growing higher each day, and traditional gyms are not helping people drop the excess pounds they’d like to lose, so they are joining boot camp style classes.
In 2007, Susan Sloan, 53, weighed 350 pounds. Not seeing any results from working out in traditional gyms. She joined Tallahassee Kettlebells and within two years she had lost 100 pounds.
Sloan reflected on where she once was all those years ago and has moments where she cannot believe how her body is shaped now. She still sees a large woman that has a hard time getting around, and now being close to 200 pounds she has a sense of joy and sees a light at the end of her weight loss journey.
“I will no longer be a part of obese statistics.” Sloan said.
Annual medical expenditures attributable to obesity have doubled in less than a decade, and may be as high as $147 billion per year, according to a new study by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention.
Tallahassee Kettlebells is one of Tallahassee’s specialized fitness programs designed to help clients lose weight quickly.
Laurel Blackburn, owner of Tallahassee Kettlebells, has been creating specialized workouts that cater to obese adults in Tallahassee since 2005.
“We personalize the training needs to each client’s abilities and fitness level. With time and commitment from the client, we get excellent results,” Blackburn said.
Although Vaughn Wilson, 48, is not obese, he said he was not happy with the traditional gym scene and needed more of a personal push to lose his extra weight. He started attending Success Athletic Training, where Oneil Brown, former co-owner of SAT, helped motivate and push his clients to live a healthy life.
“I was much bigger than I wanted to be,” Wilson said. “I wanted to seize control of my health again so I joined SAT to get the one-on-one attention I felt I needed.”
Brown, Wilson’s personal trainer, said his clients mirror national obesity statistics in the African-American community. A 2010 study showed that 8 out of 10 African American women and 7 out of 10 African American men were obese, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health.
It is estimated that the total cost of America’s obesity problem could reach nearly $1 trillion by 2030 according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.