Tom experienced a wake-up call after getting the results of a physical when he turned 50—so he took action! Tom & DeeNae Simmons from Keller, TX have been working out with New Wave Fitness for 9 months.

Tom has lost 40 pounds so far, and he says that DeeNae has her 21-year-old physique back! How sweet of you to say, Tom!

Read Tom & DeeNae’s interview, or watch their video below!

DeeNae: I’m DeeNae Simmons, and I’m from Houston, Texas.

Tom: I’m Tom Simmons, and I live here in Keller, Texas.

Curt: Okay, and you are husband and wife, right?

DeeNae: Yes.

Curt: Okay.

Tom: I think I started the process. I was extremely busy at work, very hectic lifestyle. My health had probably deteriorated over the last two or three years. I was not as fit as I used to be, turned 50 and decided I needed to make a life change.

I had an executive physical and saw indications in my body and physical health that probably needed some work in terms of blood sugar, blood pressure and just overall health. I decided that I needed to get back on track.

With a busy lifestyle, I decided that the best thing for me, because of my work schedule, was to find someone who could adapt to our schedule and work with us, motivate us, train us two to three times a week here in our home so that it would at least eliminate the need for traveling and going to a gym and those kind of things.

I just set a target to improve my health and improve my stamina and my total fitness—my whole outlook and lifestyle—so I could live another 50 years. We’ve been married almost 30 years now, so we’ve got a lot of years together left, and wanted to make those very productive, so that was the start of it.

DeeNae: We went to purchase the Power Plate and through purchasing the Power Plate, we found out about New Wave Fitness and discovered that we could have a gym in the home. Because of Tom’s schedule, we felt like that would be great to have a workout here, make it convenient for him and also for me.

I was getting ready to turn 50 myself, and some health issues for me, some autoimmune problems. My strength was kind of going down and my energy was going down, so the working out for me has also been great.

I’ve seen a tremendous improvement in my tennis game and my energy all around. I don’t feel fatigued like I was. We don’t have the excuse not to go to the gym; it’s here for us.

Tom: I’ve lost about 40 pounds in the last 9 months. I can definitely tell the difference in the clothes that I was wearing last winter. I’ve had to alter a number of suits, buy new pants, new shirts. My shoes aren’t kind of small now. Yes, just overall.

I’ve lost a lot of weight but I do feel like strength wise there’s a balance. I’ve probably lost maybe 10 pounds of body fat and gained 10 pounds back in muscle, and I can tell that difference too in strength. In our last push-up test, I did like 55 in a minute.

Curt: Wow—that’s excellent.

Tom: In the beginning I [could do] 15-20 maybe, and struggling for that. So I can pretty much crank out mid 50s.

Curt: And I’m sure that’s improved your energy level throughout the day.

Tom: Yeah, absolutely. For upper body, we do wall squats as a test. I can remember when we both started those, we were fairly weak and we were doing wall squats for maybe a minute and a half. Within probably two or three months, we were doing over 5 minutes to where now our trainer, Brandon, is having us carry weight because it just takes so long.

Curt: Wow! That’s a great improvement.

Tom: That part has been a great improvement.

DeeNae: It has. I just had a friend ask me the other day, actually just in general conversation, her husband has recently retired and he’s probably about our age, maybe a little bit older, and she said he was having some real health issues and she was struggling encouraging him to work out with her, take a walk with her. I said, “Have you ever considered having a personal trainer or having somebody come to your home?”

So in a brief scenario, I basically told her about going into Fitness HQ and looking at some fitness equipment, and looking to New Wave Fitness. Because of my husband’s tight schedule, it was difficult for him to go to a gym and therefore I didn’t want to have a gym membership and just me go, so I wanted to benefit both of us. Having an in-home trainer is worth every penny. It definitely keeps you accountable.

We actually look forward to it because we’re able to challenge each other and motivate each other in this small atmosphere. It’s our personal home so we don’t have to feel intimidated by all the equipment, all the noise and all the people that you find in the gym. So I said, “Look into it,” because if time is a problem for you or maybe money might be…but I think it’s definitely worth looking into.

Tom: Diet has to be a huge part of it. We’ve definitely changed our eating habits. We got motivated early on by using My Fitness Pal with Brandon and just looking at specifically how many carbs, how much protein, how much fat and how much intake and measuring that with calories.

We could do that and he could look and see and you could see the results of the strength training and the training we had at home versus the nutrition. It’s like going to the dentist and telling the dentist, “Yeah, I’ve been brushing my teeth.” They know.

DeeNae: Flossing your teeth.

Tom: They know you haven’t flossed. He knows if we’ve been eating what we say we’re going to eat. He holds us accountable, sets goals and targets and is specifically working with different kinds of foods. He suggested several kind of foods for me, my schedule at work and with traveling, very easy things.

DeeNae has lost a little bit. She clearly didn’t need to. You can look at her and tell she didn’t, but her whole physique…she’s always looked good, but she looks like she did when I married her when she was 21.

Curt: Wow! Say that one more time? That’s excellent. That’s really good. Great story.

DeeNae: That’s nice.

Curt: Very nice.