I’ve known Joanie Sompayrac for many years through our mutual interests at UTC, but I never knew we shared a phobia of gyms until I started this weight-loss effort for the newspaper’s Shape We’re In project.
Ms. Sompayrac is UC Foundation associate professor of accounting and assistant director of the University Honors program at UTC. She e-mailed to wish me luck when I first started this diet. We began commiserating over our years of yo-yo dieting, what had worked and excuses we’d used to avoid exercising.
I could trace my phobia of gyms back to the trauma of junior high gym class. Ms. Sompayrac said she had yo-yo’d all her life and tried several trainers at local gyms with no luck.
Her experiences ranged from being an overweight woman in a group of very fit gym members (all dressed in their expensive workout clothes, she added) to having to compete with a class of people for the attention of the personal trainer she was paying to work with her.
She heard some of her friends raving about their trainer, Travis Curtis in Lookout Valley.