SPOTLIGHT

Dave's Coaching Club Endeavors to Provide a Complete Solution; Here's His Step-by-Step Total Body Transformation System, Called Club Lifestyle

Interviewed by Real SOLUTIONS


WHO: David Greenwalt
WHAT: The Leanness Lifestyle Coaching Club
WHERE: Dixon, IL
SINCE: 1999
MISSION: To Provide Personal Support and Expert Guidance for Total Body Transformations.

Even though David Greenwalt lives in a small town in Illinois (a place called Dixon, which is about 90 minutes west of Chicago), you'll never come across a person who has a bigger heart. Like us, David has an unwavering passion for helping people build their best bodies. A passion that has driven him to provide step-by-step guidance, innovative tools, and powerful motivation for thousands of Members of what he calls The Leanness Lifestyle Coaching Club.

Because our values at Real SOLUTIONS are so similar to David's, we asked him if he could share how and why he inspires his Members to such extraordinary success and how our readers could discover the same success too.

Real SOLUTIONS: David, when did you first get involved in bodybuilding and fitness, and why?

David Greenwalt: I got involved in fitness, training, and bodybuilding when I was 17 years old, in my senior year of high school. Even before my senior year, I always enjoyed the "pump" and the feel and the look of muscles, but I never really got serious until August 1982. I was 5'11" at the time and weighed 140 lbs. During my senior year of High School, after rigorously training with weights and eating a diet packed with calories, I put on about 30 to 35 lbs.

I continued to lift and train and try to eat the best I could, and at that time, I was eating as much as I could because I was what people call a "hard gainer." I had a fast metabolism, and therefore, I had to eat a lot of food to keep my gains.

Then, in college, I competed in a bodybuilding show. And to be honest, I absolutely hated it! I hated getting ready for the show, and I actually hated the actual competition itself because of how horrible I felt. I lived on boiled chicken breasts and boiled peas made in my dorm room.

That was really a rude awakening for me. There was just a huge gap between what I "thought" I knew about getting ready for a bodybuilding show and cutting bodyfat verses what I "really" needed to know. I actually swore at that time I would never do another bodybuilding show as long as I lived. I realize not everyone feels this way about them, but that's how bad I hated it.

RS: Did you swear off bodybuilding too at that time?

DG: No. I loved lifting weights. I loved the physical fitness part of it. So I continued to train and got into the sport of powerlifting and competed and promoted state and local powerlifting events.

In powerlifting, there's a funny saying: "It's not that we want to eat a one-pound bag of M&M's, but you have to eat M&M's to be a powerlifter." So, I ate and ate and ate, and as I got into my mid-20's, I found I had a little easier time putting on weight. I had adapted some massive eating habits from trying to put on weight in my early 20's, so I got really strong and big.

RS: When did you officially get into the "coaching" business?

DG: Well, I was a local police officer, and we owned a gym, and while I owned the gym, I trained hundreds of people and found I really enjoyed that personal connection when I could help someone improve their fitness, improve their strength, lower their bodyfat, and increase their confidence. I really enjoy working with people in these ways.

Then I was hired by the Illinois state police. With the job change, I would be away from home for six months, so we sold the gym. But I didn't leave the fitness industry.

I started writing a newsletter every month for the Members of my online supplement store. To do that, I had to do a lot of research and reading and writing and went to university libraries to look at medical journals and really just began the process of getting more and more knowledge for myself and for my Members.

I also went back to college and took some more biology, anatomy, physiology, and nutrition courses because it was something I had wanted to explore more and wanted to have a deeper understanding of so I could be better at helping my customers with their nutrition and supplement habits.

RS: Impressive. Were you continuing your own training program throughout this time?

DG: Yes, but I had ballooned up to my heaviest weight, which was about 235 lbs—with about 26% bodyfat. [Laughs] When I say that I learned the eating habits of putting on weight to be a big, strong, fat powerlifter, I really learned those habits well.

RS: You've obviously changed those habits and are now living the "Leanness Lifestyle." What happened? How did you change?

DG: I decided, after five years of powerlifting, I was tired of being fat, even though I was strong. It was time to cut down, so I used the new knowledge I had and the research I had done—just the new knowledge of how the body works—to sensibly create a program to cut my own bodyfat from 26% or so down to below 10%.

What I found was it wasn't anything like the first time I did it. It was so much easier. Completely different from when I did my bodybuilding show back in college.

It's amazing what can happen when you have the right knowledge and apply it in the right way. And that really was an awakening for me.

After I had cut my bodyfat down to nine percent and held it there for about six months, I decided I wanted to cut it down further. So I decided just to apply scientific principles and the new knowledge I had gained to my new transformation—which was taking my bodyfat from nine or ten percent down to five percent. And I did! I did it sensibly. I did it eating a wide variety of foods. I did it eating fruits. I did it eating lots of vegetables. I did it eating bread. I did it eating lean meats. I did it eating a number of things that were supposedly "off limits."

Not only did I reach five percent bodyfat, but I had a good time. I didn't hate the process. Even though it took a lot of effort and concentration and focus, it wasn't hard. It was nothing like when I did it with too little knowledge back when I was in college. And so that was really an epiphany for me.

RS: Did this have any affect on your business at the time?

DG: Well, at that time, we were publishing a magazine through my company called The Health and Performance Market Place. I soon wrote an article for the next issue about my transformation. It was called "Bodybuilding Completion Become a Leanness Lifestyle."

The point of that article was, I just transformed my body to a new level of bodyfat, but afterwards, I couldn't honestly come up with answers to questions like why I shouldn't, give or take a little, eat this way and train this way for life.

I didn't follow a typical bodybuilder diet. I didn't live on four foods. I didn't starve myself. I didn't beat myself to death with cardio. I didn't cut my sodium out two weeks before. I didn't cut my water out three days before. I didn't do these foolish things that just kind of continue to live on in bodybuilding competition folklore. And I still got incredibly lean, and I was incredibly healthy.

RS: Is this when you started coming up with the idea for The Leanness Lifestyle?

DG: Yes, I really started to think more about the lifestyle. Because the things I had done to reach such a low level of bodyfat were just intelligent, healthy lifestyle guidelines. That's where the Leanness Lifestyle was born. And I quickly found that people really loved it.

RS: What a great story. I noticed that when someone becomes a client of yours, you supply them with the tools and techniques to achieve their goals; one of which is your book, which is incredibly thorough by the way. How did your Leanness Lifestyle book come about?

DG: Our supplement store was really doing incredibly well, and we were knocking 'em dead in the business sense, but I had an unsettled feeling that I wasn't doing all I was capable of. We were shipping out a lot of supplements and had good prices and good service and good quality this, that, and the other, but I felt there was just something missing. I felt that within me, I had much more to give than low prices and great customer service.

I knew I had to write the book. For a couple of reasons. One, at the time, in 1997, there wasn't much available as far as books go. Today, there are more books that are body-transformation oriented. But back then, I couldn't find one. Of course, there were books on exercise and nutrition. There were a couple of books here and there on emotional or behavior strategies, but I couldn't find anything that didn't A) Dumb it down, or B) Cover it all. Nothing tied everything together. Nutrition. Exercise. And emotional behavior change. I really felt I needed to share with people a complete message.

I spent all of 1998 writing the book—besides running my business, and in August of 1999, it was released. The first edition of The Leanness Lifestyle. And it was also at that time that I started the Coaching Club.

RS: You have toured us through your online Coaching Club, and we've all been very impressed. And so have all of the people we've referred to you. What can Members of your Coaching Club expect to receive when they become a client?

DG: The Members that come in now can really expect, first of all, step-by-step guidance. What do I do first? Then what? And then what? All of those questions are answered through the online membership area at Club Lifestyle. I lay everything out because I've found it's much easier for people to begin immediately and to really be doing the right things in the right order.

The idea behind it is to help people who have in their heads how much they hate losing weight, how awful it is, and it's showing them that if you do step one, step two, and step three in order, it's not so bad. It can be done, and it can be done easier than it has been done in the past.

Of course, it is going to take effort—I'm very upfront about that. We never lie to our Members and say anything like, "You're going to take 30 lbs off in two weeks, and it's going to be easy and effortless" and all that.

Support—in many forms—comes next. That's group support from other Members who are serious enough to become a Member and really show they have the desire to change. There's a discussion forum that the other Members use to support each other.

One of the differences between our forum and a typical public forum is that there are no flames and no idiots allowed. Anyone who's ever participated in a public forum knows what I'm talking about. You know the people who come in and all they want to do is disrupt the group. Or the people who want to rant and rave. They have nothing to do with body transformation or nutrition or exercise or anything at all. Our group discussion forum is free of all that. It just doesn't exist because it is moderated by me, and the Members who come in are serious enough to appreciate what this group is really about.

Another feature in the Club are teams. Now this is new as of May 2004. Members can start a team and invite other Members to join an existing team. And new teams are starting all the time. So this is really a great way to increase the desire to continue on, to be a part of something bigger than just the individual process, and Members are really, really enjoying it.

There's also personal support from me. And they have access to me on what I call private messaging. The reason I use private messaging and not email is because your whole family may use the same email. And some of the conversations I have with Members are very private. I treat those conversations with the seriousness they deserve. We're able to communicate back and forth—not in real time—but through this private messaging system, so it does truly remain private.

Members also have access to me at various times in what's called "Live Chat." That's a personal, one-on-one chat. It's not a group chat. And they can ask questions and get answers immediately, in real time.

Next, as far as what Members can expect of Club Lifestyle, is to receive knowledge they can immediately, but also realistically, apply. Knowledge is really no good unless it can be and is applied.

Do you want to try Dave's Coaching Club, risk-free, for a full 30 days? As a reader of Real SOLUTIONS, you can start your 30-day trial to The Leanness Lifestyle today. Simply click here to begin.*

RS: What tools do you offer your Members to help them apply their newfound knowledge?

DG: There are several. Let me run through them:

1) The nutrition tools online within the membership area not only track all of the important nutritional intake and provide feedback about that, but there's also a separate nutrition tool that actually teaches Leanness Lifestyle nutrition fundamentals in an easy-to-understand, quick-to-use way. It teaches how to eat and what to eat and in what ways and in what times and in what combinations. One is actually a tracking tool for all the important macronutrients that really matter, and the other teaches Leanness Lifestyle fundamentals.

2) There are hundreds of Member-donated recipes that have been personally approved by me in an area I call "Steal a Meal," which now has over 300 recipes. It gives people a quick and easy way to find meals. These are real meals other Members really eat. Not the meals you'll find in a lot of cookbooks that look really good but take a long time to prepare or just don't fit the lifestyle.

3) There's also software called Lean Account that really ties together activity and nutrition. And this is something the Members just absolutely love. Think about it like a checking account where your exercise are deposits, and your consumption of foods and drink that have calories are withdrawals.

With the Lean Account, each week you start with a balance, but instead of money, the balance is calories. And at the end of the seven days, the goal is to not run out of calories. Once it's all set up—there's a process that takes you step by step—it's really, really effective at showing people the impact of overeating, under-eating, over-exercising, and under-exercising. It shows them at a glance what's really going on. If someone misses a workout, where they may have otherwise said in the past, "Ah, yeah, well, I missed that workout. Too bad." Now, missing that workout is showing up in Lean Account to have a true impact on their balance. And the goal is, again, not to go below zero calories at the end of seven days. And at the end of seven days, we start over again, fresh.

4) There are activity and exercise tracking tools that tell you what the real value of the exercise or the activity you're doing is. You know, a lot of people have a belief that 20 minutes of walking is, oh, 800 calories burned. Or they have this misconception about what various activities are really worth. And we have tools online to help them really understand what their activity is truly worth.

5) We have a weight-training software program called the Workout Professor that actually helps you design your program, or you can use custom-made templates that are already designed. And the cool thing about the Workout Professor is that it learns with you. For example, when you start out, it gives you a particular upper body workout. When you do the workout, you take your printed sheet to the workout. And you come back, and you confirm what you really did. Let's say, for example, that the workout says you can bench press 100 lbs for 10 repetitions. But let's say that you couldn't get it. You got 100 lbs for eight repetitions. You missed it by two repetitions. When you come back to the Workout Professor and you log in, you are going to confirm whether you got what it says. So it said, do 100 for 10, but you only got 100 for eight. Well, the Workout Professor learns that you're not quite as strong as it thought. And once it learns that, it's got it. So your next workout will be adjusted perfectly, so it's right on instead of being too heavy.

An infinite number of workouts can be created by the user. And there are dozens of pre-made workouts a person can just choose from. And these are all workouts that have either been designed by me or have been approved by me.

All of the "tools" are provided for free, as part of my Coaching Club.

Do you want to try Dave's Coaching Club, risk-free, for a full 30 days? As a reader of Real SOLUTIONS, you can start your 30-day trial to The Leanness Lifestyle today. Simply click here to begin.*

RS: Since your Club is mostly online, with the occasional phone chats and private messaging, how do you help keep Members motivated?

DG: I'm always looking for quotes and sayings and leveraging tools that can help people get and stay motivated. And on Club Lifestyle, there is a whole motivation section. It's continually evolving, continually improving.

Reporting within Club Lifestyle is, I'm going to unabashedly say, just incredible: I have quantified the success steps necessary for people to get and stay lean. When people use the tools they are given as a Member, over a period just after seven days, they will begin to be graded: 90% is an A, 80% is a B, and so on, just like in college. And it's much more than just trying to get a good score. It's not really about getting a 90% or getting a 95% score. What that score means is that you are really doing it. You are really applying the lifestyle principles. And there's not much more that someone can ask of you than that.

I'm very big on performance goals over outcome goals. And that's why only five percent of the whole grading process is based on how much weight you lose. Ninety-five percent of the grading process is based on the performance goals we set up and that you have told the system in a number of different ways that you've done.

There's another area within the club for them to journal their private thoughts and feelings about the process. That's a really great way for them to sound off. It's a way for them to track how they're feeling at various stages of their transformation. And a lot of people find incredible power in that because it gives them a place to vent and then to be able to go back and look at various points to see how they were feeling and how they got through it.

One of the things we've made available, because the Members requested it, is what we call public viewing. You can share your nutrition tracking, your activity, your journal, and how you're doing with the world, and we make it so there's just a link you can give to friends and family members and people who are involved in other websites and other forums here and there to check up on you. They don't even have to be a Member to check up on you.

RS: There's also quite an impressive library on your site, as well as your personal blog. Do you find these are helpful to your Members?

DG: Thank you. There are thousands of news articles that I have personally entered from research journals, magazines, and whatnot. There's also a newsletter, past Club Lifestyle Newsletters, current Club Lifestyle Newsletters, all in downloadable format. We provide as much information as we can for Members.

RS: What would you say is the most popular feature of The Leanness Lifestyle Coaching Club?

DG: I'd say three things: the Nutrition Analyzer, the Workout Professor, and the discussion forum. Lean Account is right up there as well. I'd say those four are really the most popular tools because they really help tie everything together, and they help people really see where they may need to improve.

RS: Do you have any favorite success stories you'd like to share with our readers? From looking through your book and website, we know there are literally hundreds and hundreds, but can you pick a few that really stand out in your mind?

DG: To be honest, there are just so many, it's hard to pick one or two. How their lives changed, I would say in general, is way beyond what happens physically. I wouldn't even be able to say that there are one or two or three Members that have impacted me the most. There are just so many, and I just respect and appreciate all the Members have done for me in allowing me to share in their lives as they make this transformation because it's so much more than a physical transformation.

Editor's Note: Since Dave is way too modest, we thought you might want to see some of his "success stories," so we've provided a link here which goes into his website, where you can view a few of them (including Dave's and his wife, Tracy's): www.LeannessLifestyle.com.

RS: Now that we know much more about what you offer to your Members, what are the core values which internally drive your company?

DG: Character comes first. I'll never sacrifice my character to make a sale. I'll never sacrifice my character to lead a Member in the wrong direction. And I'll never stoop to gutter levels like some people have in this industry. I just respect my clients so much.

Always moving forward is a core value. Always progressing. Always bettering in some way, some aspect of the Club for our Members. Those are my core values for the Club.

RS: What do you feel your goal is in the fitness industry?

DG: Americans are really good at losing weight. They're not very good at keeping it off. And as I've sat in on meetings with obesity research experts all over the country—the top in their field—what's really struck me is that they don't know how to help. However, I believe that just because the top experts "in their field" haven't figured out what it's really going to take to help men and women get the weight off and keep it off doesn't mean I'm not supposed to. I don't accept that I can't. I don't accept that I'm not already doing that. And I don't accept that it's a "throw your hands up in the air" affair, and there's nothing you can do and that people just aren't going to change.

I believe my responsibility as a lifestyle and body-transformation coach is to help people make the transformation and keep the weight off for life. And I take it personally when someone doesn't succeed. The way I look at it, although there truly are people who aren't going to succeed—there are people who are going to play victim and who are going to simply look for a magic solution and will not put out any effort whatsoever to change—there are a lot of people who are willing to put out some effort. Who are willing to put out some emotional energy toward the change process, and if they are not successful, I take that personally because that means I haven't evolved the program enough. I think my role is to create the program that the experts haven't figured out how to implement. I think we're doing that.

It will be an ever changing process for as long as I am doing what I do. I will always be learning and passing on information that I've learned to help Members. It will never be status quo with Club Lifestyle because there's no such thing as knowing everything there is to know about this.

Do you want to try Dave's Coaching Club, risk-free, for a full 30 days? As a reader of Real SOLUTIONS, you can start your 30-day trial to The Leanness Lifestyle today. Simply click here to begin*.

RS: Dave, you have been so insightful, and we've really enjoyed learning more about your Club. Is there anything else you want to add?

DG: No, I just want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to share the message and for your thoughtful questions. I really appreciate it and hope that if people are interested they will give us a chance and let me prove that we are as good as I say we are.

Ninety-eight percent of all change is self change. However, when you can make those changes with the help of someone who's already been there, plus the collective wisdom of hundreds and thousands of men and women who have also already been there, it's only going to make that change process that much easier.

RS: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today and share your message. *For our newsletter readers, we have arranged a special you, for those who want to check out your Coaching Club, correct?

DG: Yes, the offer is 30 days free. You try it on me. It's my risk. It's my responsibility to prove to you that the Club is worth you staying as a Member. There's no obligation to stay. There is no contract to stay. You come and go. If you decide within the 30 days that you don't want to stay, you simply email me, IquitLL@LeannessLifestyle.com, and you're done. No charge. And then if you decide to stay, the Club is only $29.95 a month. If you ask my Members, they'll tell you that price is a steal, once you get involved and see the positive changes you're capable of making.

RS: With everything you offer, that sounds like an incredible value! Thank you again, David, and best of luck with your Coaching Club!

• Next Article: "Muscle Fatigue"
• Back to Issue 35 Table of Contents

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