My name is Milton Davis and my partner’s name is Joan Clark and we are proud members of Nautilus Plus on Newman Boulevard, in Lasalle. I am also a blogger. Your staff so impressed myself and my partner that we felt compelled to say thank you and to tell all we could reach what a wonderful staff you have and what a pleasure it is to train in your facility. This is what I wrote and this is how we feel.
Sometimes it is just nice to be able to say something positive about a person, a group of people or a business and to give praise instead of negative criticism. Everyone who has read this blog knows that if something bothers me, or if I feel mistreated, or that someone else is being taken advantage of, that I will put it out on the internet for the whole world to see and be warned. As with all people who want to help make the world a little better place by them having been on it, I seem to gravitate towards what is wrong with the world, the problems we seem to be facing and our inability, or lack of desire to want real changes that matter, if we are to survive as a species. Somehow the good in the world gets pushed to the back, in our hopes to solve the bad things before they get to the point of no return. What most people who read this blog also know is that I was diagnosed with having diabetes and prostate cancer this year and that I have a thyroid condition, making my need to lose weight and get into a healthy lifestyle and stay there a necessity, if I was to stay alive. The funny thing is that I always knew what I needed to do in terms of being healthy, like eating properly and exercising, but for some reason, I would start walking every day and then stop. I would start to eat sensibly and then stop. I was told by my doctor that I was killing myself and that just working physical was not enough exercise to get healthy and that my eating habits were going to give me a heart attack in the very near future. It was suggested that I find a gym and a nutritionist and make a lifesaving lifestyle change immediately. It was shortly after doing just that, that I needed to have my prostate removed and I did, but this is not a story about the operation, although this great group of people got me in the best physical shape that I had been in for a long time which helped my recovery time greatly. This is however the story of a warm, caring knowledgeable group of experts and professionals that come together every day to guide, instruct and motivate people like you and me to get ourselves healthy by lifestyle changes and how to stay there.
After visiting many gyms and walking out of them for various reasons, my partner and I walked into Nautilus Plus, on Newman Boulevard in Lasalle and knew that we had finally found a gym that we would feel comfortable in. Audrey Peltier-Jutras was the young lady at the reception counter when my partner and I walked in that day, looking for help. The first thing that impressed us was that Audrey asked us each, what brought us to Nautilus; what were we looking for from them and for us and what was the present state of our health. We were given detailed questionnaires to fill out designed to give all the information that the Nautilus trainers and nutritionists that they would need to design a program based on our goals, health and needs. Audrey was courteous, professional and friendly and I felt at ease as she began to explain about the different programs available at Nautilus Plus and how much they cost aside from the membership. Everything that was suggested to us was done so we could make the right choices to help us achieve our goals taking into account how much time we felt we could dedicate to our workouts and how much we were willing to invest in our new lifestyle. Audrey at no time gave us the feeling of being pushed, but instead encouraged me and my partner to not put off making the decision to train and to begin the first step toward a new way of life that would prove to be better for us in all ways before we left.
We opted for the Transform Program and have never looked back. We were assigned a personal trainer named Caroline Vincent and a nutritionist named Marie-Jose Cabana and given dates to meet with them and begin our instruction. These two professionals have shown us the way to lose weight and keep it off, get in shape and stay in shape and more importantly how it is the total life style change and not just the exercise that counts, if we were achieve our goals of a healthy more active life and maintain our new life style and the overall health benefits. With their knowledge of their craft, their ability to communicate, their patience, their ability to teach and most importantly their ability to listen we began our journey to a better, healthy life. At Nautilus Plus the nutritionist and the trainer work separately, but together to design a complete life style change for you, but I will describe what they have done for me and my partner individually, because they are deserving of individual recognition for what they each bring to the team.
Marie-Jose Cabana, is a specialist, who has taught us how to eat properly and still feel full and still enjoy what we were eating. Marie-Jose showed us that what you eat does not have to be dull and tasteless and that there are healthy alternatives for everything that is not healthy. Marie-Jose explained tirelessly about portion sizes and what foods do and the differences between fats, sugars, carbohydrates and protein and to this end actually went as far as going to Super C with us pointing out what the different colors meant as far as nutrition and how to read the labels for content properly and a whole bunch more. In one session when I talked about back sliding Marie-Jose said, “It takes 3,500 calories, before you lose 1 pound of fat. If you lose 400 calories on the treadmill in 30 minutes you will not lose 1 pound in that week, if you do not incorporate healthy eating. A McDonalds Big Mack is 600 calories, cakes, soft drink more, so by eliminating these food choices and replacing them with healthy food you will achieve greater results in permanent weight loss faster. Marie-Jose finally made me understand that exercise makes your body strong, but healthy food choice is needed to reduce your weight and keep it off and will provide the fuel that will give you the energy that is necessary to do the exercises that you need to complete your transformation.
Caroline Vincent, is one of the best trainers I have ever had and I have had coaches and trainers for every sport throughout my life, until I stopped playing sports and started to find my entertainment in other ways. Caroline showed us that a healthy heart is the most important key to getting the most out of any workout and so went through several different methods of cardio exercise techniques, slowly building up our endurance and confidence. Caroline combined the cardio with a weight and exercise program first designed to help keep the weight off, strengthen the inner smaller core muscles and then designed a program to help maintain what we had gained. In Caroline we were blessed with a trainer who knew how to motivate, challenge and encourage without ever scolding, or applying the guilt trip. If something did not work for us it was changed and so we watched as the transformation in our bodies and way of thinking about our health began to change for the better. We are comfortable in the gym now, confident in our ability to use the tools of the gym safely and our capability of getting the best out of every hour spent working out at Nautilus Plus. I refer to Caroline as an artist to which she gives me a look of humbleness preferring to give all of the credit to me, or us, but without her guidance I do not think we could have gotten where we are today with our new healthy lifestyle.
All of the people working at Nautilus, on Newman boulevard in Lasalle are friendly and make one feel like you belong and are special, and every the consummate professionals with just the right amount of positive energy to make even the most shy, insecure person feel welcome, upbeat and secure. On this note I must give props to Nautilus Plus, on Newman Boulevard in Lasalle for having the cleanest environment of any gym that I have been in, barring none.
Renato does a fine job making sure that everything is clean and proper in every room in Nautilus Plus, on Newman Boulevard in Lasalle which is no small feat, but he is so much more than that. Renato was the first person to say hello and introduce himself to us after our team. Renato is out going, friendly and helpful and goes out of his way to make people feel welcome and comfortable. Renato is always smiling and offering words of encouragement to us all. He is a true ambassador for Nautilus Plus and a welcome part of our routine when at the gym. With a big smile and a warm way Renato only enhances the total atmosphere of being part of a big family. This is the sense of well-being and comfort that the entire staff at Nautilus Plus, on Newman Boulevard in Lasalle gives my partner and I every day and have grown to look forward to when are training there and miss when we cannot.
When I thought all was lost at the end of my cancer operation, my team at Nautilus Plus, on Newman Boulevard in Lasalle, helped me to get back on my feet and stuck with me as I struggled once again to get back in shape. I owe my personal trainer, Caroline Vincent and a nutritionist, Marie-Jose Cabana a debt of thanks for staying with me and for their great advice; they will never know how they changed my life for the good. To Audrey Peltier-Jutras who has recently taken a job in another Nautilus Plus thank you for always making us feel welcome, encouraging us to take that first step to wellness and making us feel that we were in good hands. I thank her for caring about my health and making my working through scheduling an easy process during and after my sickness and operation. I would just like to say that joining Nautilus Plus, on Newman Boulevard in Lasalle, has been one of the brightest experiences in my life and my partner's life of late and something we have never regretted and hope to continue for a long time to come.” Finally I would just like to say that Marie Claude Joyal and Lea Lemay-Lapointe have really done a wonderful job in upholding the feeling of being part of a family that cares. Always smiling, always ready to help figuring out ways to make everything fit financially into a schedule that makes getting the most out of everything that we choose to avail ourselves of in terms of special offers and training programs possible. These 2 ladies are always wishing us a good training session and just make you want to just keep coming back. I would close by saying thank you to all of the staff at Nautilus Plus on Newman Boulevard in Lasalle Quebec for all that you have done to change my partner’s and my life and for the hard work and dedication that you bring to the table. You are changing life styles and saving lives.
Happy Holidays.
Sincerely
Milton Davis and Joan Clark