Like a lot of people, I spend my day in front of a computer. I can’t get to the gym with any regularity during lunch (but I always manage to get to lunch). And like a lot of people who’ve just entered their 30s, I thought I was maintaining a baseline of fitness and weight control with occasional runs during the week. But this winter, I discovered to my dismay that fewer and fewer of my clothes fit me comfortably. Rather than buy a new wardrobe, I realized I needed to do something even more radical. I needed to go to BOOT.

BOOT is “the fitness recovery platform” of The Program, a complete line of fitness products offered at The Delta in Green Hills (3841 Green Hills Village Drive, Ste. 450, 292-6600), The Club Fitness and Nutrition in Bellevue (7062 Hwy. 70 S., 662-8989), The Club at Westside (11 Vaughn’s Gap Road, 352-8500) and soon to be offered at The Club at Brentwood (15580 Old Hickory Blvd., 834-1372). Randy Holland, managing partner of Fitness Holdings, LLC, first developed The Program as a trainer eight years ago while he was coaching a handful of clients at the Green Hills YMCA. “The problem I faced,” he says, “was that I had to lay off of any attempt to control what my clients did outside of training sessions. There was an unwritten rule that a trainer wasn’t supposed to mandate a particular lifestyle. Consequently, I was always limited in my ability to make far-reaching changes in their lives.”

Holland realized that if he were to take a group of trainers working from core ideas about fitness, and added to those beliefs a less defensive, more hands-on approach, he could be more effective in achieving the results his clients wanted.

BOOT, the first phase of The Program, is geared toward individuals who want fitness recovery, and it’s radical in approach. “What we do with BOOT,” Holland says, “is have an individual under our control for a period of time and take a real hard look at what their body does in terms of energy exchanges. BOOT is about telling the total truth about a person’s physiology by analyzing all the energy they take in (calories) and all the energy they give off (exercise) as they train with us toward certain goals. In the end, we expose the truth about their physiology, so that they know what they can expect from their bodies in the future. The product we deliver is self-awareness.”

BOOT sounds as simple as it is intense. Under the close supervision of a trainer over a six- to 10-week period, a pair of participants weight-train five days a week for an hour. As well, trainees are required to meet certain goals in daily cardiovascular training. (Usually, about an hour of cardio is required to burn the necessary calories.) Meanwhile, the trainer works closely with the client to develop and monitor a rigorous diet during the session (and to castigate transgressions when necessary).

BOOT is geared toward training a person’s metabolism to be more efficient by modifying eating habits, cardiovascular activity, strength training and hydration. Because significant metabolic transformation takes a full year to change, clients are educated on how to continue after the session. The idea is educational in the strictest sense of the word. “If my client achieves his or her goal,” says fitness coach John Payne, “I’ve worked myself out of a job.”

BOOT begins with a thorough physiological assessment by the fitness coach, an extensive work-up that charts the participant’s vitals (heart rate, body fat percentage, age, lean muscle mass and resting heart rate), all of which are plugged into a proprietary computer program. The inaugural day of BOOT is spent getting pinched and weighed and tabulated from head to toe, learning the hard facts of your fitness, or lack thereof. Using lean muscle mass and daily activity level, individual metabolism is calculated—a figure that indicates the number of calories you burn each day. Based on this number, the trainer assigns the number of calories to be consumed on a daily basis, broken down into protein, fat and carbohydrates, and coupled with the number of calories to be burned each day through cardiovascular activity. The goal is simple: eat like an athlete and train like an athlete.

Though not physically demanding, the first day of BOOT is emotionally challenging. When you ascertain your weight and body fat ratio, you learn all the incontrovertible facts of the lost fitness that you’ve been trying to ignore for months, maybe even years.

Trainees are then given a book full of individual tables and schedules—what amounts to a daily ledger—and asked to keep track of all the calories taken in and expended, as well as the amount of water consumed each day. “What we accomplish by having clients monitor their bodies so closely is that they create a fitness autobiography,” Payne says. “Their BOOT book becomes a record of how their body works.” The numbers are monitored by the coach and logged into the computer daily. If the participant is not meeting his or her consumption and expended-calorie goals, that failure will not only show up, it will also predict whether the participant meets his or her weight goals each week. Thus, the monitoring pinpoints the cause of failure so that it can be corrected. Further, the participants are weighed every Monday as an additional check. At the end of BOOT, all vitals and measurements are taken again.

I participated in the six-week BOOT under coach John Payne, himself a former competitive bodybuilder. After sustaining a few injuries, he decided to take a more balanced approach to coaching—which hasn’t diminished his intensity. He doesn’t let his trainees get away with slacking off. “My clients don’t have to like me,” Payne says. “At the same time, I want them to respect the passion I have for them to do well in The Program.”

Although BOOT is intense, it doesn’t foment a militaristic, no-pain/no-gain atmosphere. The workouts themselves are challenging but not torturous, and a great deal of attention is paid to individual needs and limitations. (I was often sore, but never paralyzed, the morning after a workout.) When my preexisting hip problem that had taken a sports medicine therapist weeks to repair flared up, Payne determined almost immediately that the problem was my back, not my hips, and the stretches he gave me fixed the problem within days.

One of the most challenging parts of BOOT is the change in diet. When, at BOOT’s outset, Payne gave me my food goals, it seemed nearly impossible that I would be able to function on so little—especially in light of the fact that part of my session overlapped the Thanksgiving holidays. Surprisingly, for the first two weeks, staying within my food parameters wasn’t as difficult as I thought. I was required to eat every four hours, and that kept me from getting too hungry. I also knew that if I wasn’t completely satisfied with my meal, it wouldn’t be long before I got to eat again.

After the first couple of weeks, however, the restrictive diet became more difficult to deal with. Dinner consisted mostly of lean meat, vegetables and fruit. Pasta and bread, foods heavy in carbohydrates, were not permitted after lunch, and admittedly I craved them in ways that were almost embarrassing. Cheese, butter, sweets and alcohol were out. (Again, I cheated here and there—and felt guilty every time.) To manage, I had to learn how not to get myself into frustrating situations, like going to the supermarket when I was hungry. I also had to use a lot of imagination when it came to spicing up my meals without adding to my bottom-line caloric intake.

In the end, however, the hardest part of BOOT was meeting my cardio goal, which required about six additional hours of working out every week. By its nature, BOOT is extremely time-consuming, and on top of my job, my daily training and food restrictions, it was often the first thing to give. I struggled regularly on weekends to make up the cardio work I hadn’t done during the week and only met my goal on one of the six weeks. True, BOOT is a terrific crash course in fitness, but one should emphasize the crash part. Sacrifices are required to be a stellar BOOT candidate.

The average fat loss of a BOOT participant is 12 to 28 pounds, and my goal was 9 pounds. At the end of my six weeks, I lost 8 fat pounds and gained 4 pounds of muscle for a total weight loss of 4 pounds. I also lost a few inches everywhere. My overall body fat percentage went down by approximately 6 percent.

Other participants have had tremendous results. One client in The Program lost a little over a pound a week over the course of a year (about 40 weeks of BOOT), reducing her weight from approximately 300 to 220 pounds. A 15-year-old client went from 225 pounds to 150 pounds over the same time frame. “She was one of my most satisfying clients to watch go through The Program,” Payne says, “because her confidence level noticeably rose as she progressed.”

Despite the fact that I did not meet my overall weight loss goal—Thanksgiving didn’t help—I was still pleased with my results. My energy level is up; I feel stronger and healthier. I have maintained a modified weight-lifting routine, and, to a degree, the food and hydration regimes.

People interested in BOOT should keep in mind that the level of commitment is intense and the behavioral changes required can be genuinely stressful. There is, however, a great deal that participants learn about their physiology and diet, not to mention the high-quality individual attention they receive from the coaches. You come away from BOOT knowing how to achieve fitness and the sacrifices required to get results.

Participation in The Program requires membership in one of the fitness clubs mentioned above. The next 10-week BOOT starts on March 17, the six-week BOOT on June 2. A six-week BOOT costs $1,458, and a 10-week BOOT costs $2,430. (Each breaks down to $48 per hour.) Call the Delta for information on other fitness products.