March 29, 2024

Doug Peterson on fitness

Jan. 6, 2008
Big City to Small Town:
How America Can Get
Healthy
Interview By Anne Stanton
Doug Petersen, a personal trainer, has gained a bit of fame in Traverse City for his 18-month long stint working on the Michael Moore movie, Sicko, as the staff’s wellness coordinator. The job took Petersen out of Traverse City and into the New York City world of filmmaking, celebrity parties and big city stress. We asked Petersen to share with Northern Express a little about his own life and what he learned about fitness in his year spent in New York. Like many professional trainers, Petersen doesn’t share specifics about his clients - and he had to hold to his policy for this interview.


NE: How did you first get interested in fitness and health?

DP: I grew up on a farm in Southern Michigan with parents who were extremely health conscious. We didn’t eat chocolate. Our cookies at Christmas time were made with whole wheat flour, a little honey. No Easter candy. Instead we got a carob bar from the organic store. When we came home from school, we had chores to do—weed a couple of rows in the garden, and then we’d take off and play.

NE: It sounds like your parents were ahead of their time—or maybe behind their time.
DP: My parents were fairly pro-gressive at the time. My dad was a live-it kind of guy. We weren’t lectured to by any means. He was fairly liberal, a McGovern guy. They protested the pop and candy bar machines at school to have healthier stuff put in. My mom grew and canned organic food from the garden, so it gave me a real sense of where food came from. They even took us to slaughter yards. We were primarily vegetarians, but we had milk cows, we had eggs from our chickens. We churned our own butter.
A lot of your attitudes are ingrained into you as a child. We weren’t rewarded for our grades or chores with vanilla shakes or desserts. There was no buying our work or efforts. But it wasn’t all about work. My mom had a spiritual side. She played the piano and guitar at church. She read everything to us kids and there was very little TV. We did Shakespearian plays and mom would make us each take a part. We had a huge house with rooms for all these creative endeavors like clay making. The basement was a skating rink.
Yet we weren’t sheltered. We went on trips all around the country and sailed the Great Lakes, darting from marina to marina. That’s how we found Traverse City in 1978, and moved here in 1979—when I was a high school sophomore.

NE: So did you crave things you missed out on as a kid? Pop, candy, chocolate?
DP: No, I didn’t develop any addictions or cravings—nor did my brothers and sisters. Not one of us has addictive issues with sweets, alcohol, cigarettes, or junk food in general.

NE: Do you drink?
DP: I drink alcohol pretty moderately. I love coffee, but organic coffee without all the sugar and milk and fat that you get with frappacinos and mochas.

NE: Did you play organized sports?
DP: We did when we were older. My dad wanted us to play something every season, but he didn’t push us into it. He knew there were kids into athletics or academics, and then there were kids who fell in between, and we were not going to be that. So we played sports.
I don’t remember drinking; I don’t even remember seeing alcohol and drugs, maybe because of the kids we hung
out with.

NE: So how did you get into fitness training?
DP: My undergrad was in horticulture at MSU, and then I went onto law school, but I had no idea what it meant to be an attorney. In my third year, I lost interest and ran out of money, and I moved back to East Lansing and took a job in the environmental consulting field. I hung out at the Michigan Athletic Club and that peaked my interest in becoming a personal trainer.
I think the turning point came when I went to visit friends in Palm Beach and ended up taking a 15-week training course in personal training. It was super intense. When I finished, I began training people at the Breakers, a very exclusive six star resort where Donald Trump
hung out. I did that for a while, but I wanted to come home—you know how everyone comes back to Traverse City.
I started working part-time at the
Fitness Center.
It was a great experience for me. A lot of the clients were lower functioning and came in for a combination of exercise and physical therapy. We had the older people, the physically disabled, the fit and the unfit, even a girl with green hair. It wasn’t a mainstream gym where everyone wants to be rock hard. It was great, they had a place to go and socialize instead of having to stay isolated from everyone else.
So I worked there for eight or nine years, and now it’s a lot more mainstream. Then I got the offer to begin working in New York, which I did in the winter of 2005. Prior to that, I thought it would be beneficial for me to spend some time at the Pritikin Institute in Florida. I knew it was a special place and wanted to learn more for this position.

NE: What was that like?
DP: It was an amazing place. I felt enlightened and wondered why the whole world wasn’t hearing about this. But it’s private and very expensive—they make a lot of money bringing in people to this compound for two to three weeks at a time.

NE: But it seems like you had already learned all there was to know about nutrition as a kid.
DP: For me, there were certain truths and untruths about food and nutrition. There are so many things we’re told. One day, we’re hearing about high protein and no carbs. Then you hear about good carbs and bad fats—you don’t know what to believe or what to suggest to clients whose heads are sometimes filled with misinformation.

NE: So what did you learn?
DP: More than anything it was to eat low fat, low sodium, and more than anything—eat fiber, fiber, fiber. I absorbed everything. I felt I could teach these classes when I left. If you could have one nutrition rule to live by, it would be to eat at least 35 grams of fiber a day, and an understanding of food satiety—what fills you up. If you consumed 35 grams of fiber every day, you’d invariably eat so many fruits and vegetables that you’d be certain to get everything you need in your diet, everything… including protein! A great book on this is Volumetrics by Barbara Rolls. There’s way less risk of colon cancer, and you feel great. It’s all about fiber and water.

NE: What does Pritikin say about cheese—that’s my biggest weakness.
DP: It doesn’t say much good about it. It’s high fat, very low fiber, very dense in calories. Same with nuts. People say there’s healthy fat in nuts, but there’s a bazillion calories in them. And there’s nothing more calorie dense than oils. On the other hand, you can do as the French do, and really savor a small amount of really good cheese or nuts or chocolate with a group of friends in slower, stress-free moments.
But realize, at the end of the day, it’s all about calories. The calorie density is greater in meats and cheeses. Protein is important; Pritikin is okay with poultry and fish, but no red meat. There are also a surprising amount of proteins in fruits and vegetables, although you have to eat a lot of them. At Pritikin, you’re eating all the time, all day it seemed like.
I think that people, in general, don’t cook like my parents did—creatively with veggies. We let our kids tell us what they want. Unfortuntely, they’ve been told by television to eat chicken nuggets and drink soda, and have developed addictions and cravings.

NE: So why not just read the Pritikin book instead of paying to go to a private facility?
DP: What you get for the money is group dynamics, which is an amazing thing. At Pritikin, there are affluent, intelligent people, all with the same goal—Hollywood people, businesspeople, politicians. These people have similar personality types—very hard driving, very intelligent. Your peers push you harder, they make you feel better.
It’s why people run marathons—
how many times does a person run a marathon alone?

NE: Organic fruits and vegetables sound great, but they’re hard to afford for an entire family, especially in the quantities you’re talking.
DP: So grow it in your backyard. My sister gets an unbelievable amount of vegetables from a very small backyard garden and she cans every fall. I know people don’t think they have the time, but you have so much more energy when you eat this way and move. You don’t necessarily need a gym, but you must move.

NE: Speaking of urban gardens, what was it like being in New York City?
DP: First off, I had to learn to navigate. I had to figure out, logistically, where do I get food, where am I going to cook it, how am I going to get it from point A to point B for the movie staff. But the stress of New York City was unbelievable. It’s go, go, go, 15 hours a day. Fortunately, at night, the city rolls out, and everyone goes to restaurants and bars, and they open up and are more approachable.

NE: So you mentioned earlier that gyms are going to have to change to survive. What did you mean by that?
DP: People are joining gyms, but a very small fraction of people stay with the program over the long haul and lose weight. The truth is, we need to change—there are more gyms than ever, but we’re getting more obese as a society. There is data that suggests that my profession, let alone gyms, are failing to meet the expectations of their clients and members.
There’s a push coming from both coasts for other modalities that are showing higher success rates; the number one growth area is to deal with the connection of mind and body. The other part of it is to build on group dynamics. Personal trainers are beginning to work with small groups instead of one on one.

NE: What do you mean, “mind and body”?
DP: Helping people to understand it’s all connected—our body, our mind, our spiritual side. We don’t give enough thought to the power of our brain, our fears, and our hormones; your brain causes actual physical changes in your body. On the other side of that, exercise and hormones make you stronger and make you feel younger and more joyful. You feel better, so you treat your family and coworkers better. You start thinking about people in the next car as human beings.
At the beginning-when someone is first starting to work out with me, I tell them they just have to have blind faith in this for a while. They need to believe they’ll ultimately have more energy after a really hard work out. It’s hard for them to fathom that, especially if they’re obese, overworked and overwhelmed.

NE: How have you grown as a personal trainer?
DP: I learned to be less structured and more open with each client. What does this person need to succeed? Maybe it’s listening to music when they run. Maybe it’s having a partner to work out with. Maybe it’s walking to work instead of walking on a treadmill. Each person has to ultimately figure it out for themselves, but a trainer can help them get there quicker and break down misinformation. Once a person is armed with knowledge, they can do anything. Trainers need to become strategic planners and lose their arrogance.
I also can’t force someone to work out. I can be a good role model, I can encourage someone, and maybe someday they’ll be ready. But I can’t force them … “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear,” as the Buddhist principle goes.

NE: Well, there’s that Nike line, “Just do it.”
DP: That’s a very modern thing. Forget about your emotions and just do it. But you’ve got to get control of your emotions. The power of positive thinking isn’t enough. If you have a spiritual void or some other great void in your life, it’s likely you’re not going to “just do it.”
Positive thinking, while cool and catchy, just seems like avoidance to me in some ways. We have to have a spiritual connection with God. He’s our ultimate healer and our ultimate psychologist. That’s part of being enlightened, whatever God works for you. I’ve always known the exercise and mental part, but there’s also the need to meditate or pray daily if you can.

NE: Speaking of spirituality, do you feel better when you run in the woods?
DP: Absolutely. I tell people, the best gym is right outside. Connecting back to nature is important and gives you some moments to be alone. I think people can start to feel like the gym is a task master—you’re with a whole bunch of people and you’re supposed to get on a certain number of machines. It feels too much like work does.

NE: I know you run and exercise right along with your clients. How many hours a day do you work out?
DP: About three or four hours a day.

NE: That’s a lot!
DP: You build up to it, and it doesn’t seem so difficult.

NE: So what’s your vision of America’s fitness future?
DP: Pretty soon, we’ll get into community based fitness and merging medicine with hospital-based gyms. We’ll have corporate wellness that does more than pay for a membership. I think group classes with higher intensity. That dynamic is very powerful; people need to put themselves into groups. Groups to talk and walk, to run, or even to compete.
Traverse City could learn from Breckenridge, Colorado, where they use some of the tourist dollar taxes to build a community based facility that would only cost about $100 a year to join. The Civic Center would be an ideal place.

NE: What are you personally doing?
DP: I got back from New York in July, and I’m back to training some old clients, and working on my next move.

NE: Final thoughts?
DP: The dirty little secret of trainers isn’t such a secret, after all. We know that because health is so personal, people blame themselves for their weight problems and keep going to the gym or a personal trainer over and over and over. They should blame themselves, but maybe if trainers and gyms tried a new approach, people would have a much better shot at success.

If you’d like to contact Doug
Petersen, call him at 231-590-6300.





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