Good Neighbor Podcast: Virginia Beach
Good Neighbor Podcast: Virginia Beach
Good Neighbor Podcast: Virginia Beach
Ep. 10 Transforming Lives: Jim White's Fitness and Nutrition Revolution in Virginia Beach
Jim White, the dynamic force behind Jim White Fitness and Nutrition, reveals how he turned his passion into nearly two decades of success in Virginia Beach. Discover the unique approach that sets his studios apart, seamlessly blending personalized fitness and nutrition guidance to create life-changing results. You'll hear how Jim's innovative concept quickly expanded, fueled by a dedicated team of registered dietitians and exercise physiologists. Plus, learn how Krista White's warm and welcoming presence contributes to the vibrant atmosphere that makes clients of all ages feel at home as they embark on transformative journeys.
We also explore Jim's inspiring community initiatives and the impactful Lift program providing fitness and nutritional support to the homeless. Jim shares his collaborative efforts with local businesses and chefs to make healthier dining options available, ensuring his clients have access to balanced meals both in and out of the gym. From corporate wellness programs to exciting fundraisers like the lift-a-thon and relay runs, Jim's commitment to eliminating fitness barriers is evident. Whether you're in Virginia Beach, Norfolk, or seeking virtual services, this episode is packed with inspiring stories and practical insights into the power of combining fitness and nutrition.
Jim White Fitness
Jim White
Virginia Beach
428 First Colonial Road
Norfolk
115 College Place
(757) 422-4728
www.JimWhiteFit.com
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Denise Taylor.
Speaker 2:Thanks for being here today. We have Jim White from Jim White Fitness and Nutrition here in Virginia Beach. Welcome, Jim.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having me, Denise.
Speaker 2:Beach. Welcome, jim. Thanks for having me. Denise, absolutely so, jim. Tell me a little bit about how this studio style idea came about and how you. This is your passion for fitness.
Speaker 3:Wow, I mean so it's. It's so crazy that next year is our 20-year anniversary.
Speaker 2:No way it started.
Speaker 3:I graduated from Youngstown State University with a degree in nutrition and I went to ODU for exercise science and got my ACSM certification. I felt that nutrition and fitness was a marriage. They had to be together, and when I opened up our first studio, I moved from Ohio right after college to Virginia Beach. It was one of the fittest cities in the United States and there wasn't a lot of fitness in the area at the time. So I saw a need and I started personal training locally and after a year there was a gym that came available. It was a personal training studio.
Speaker 3:At that time, that boutique studio style was starting to become really trendy. So I opened up a studio in Shore Drive and it was great. Within a year we outgrew that, opened up a second location on Laskin Road and within a year we outgrew that and then we opened up. We actually moved our shore drive location to Great Neck, a bigger location and then in 2014 we opened up our downtown Norfolk location and then since then it's been a whirlwind. We have our studios, we have medical nutrition therapy so we have over 30 on staff registered dietitians certified so we have over 30 on staff registered dietitians certified personal trainers. We have a corporate wellness company called JW3, jim White's Workplace Wellness. We have a nonprofit that we've been developing for 14 years called our Lift Foundation. We provide exercise nutrition to the homeless, survivals of domestic violence and at-risk youth, and it's been just a rollercoaster ride since.
Speaker 2:It's a great place. It has changed my life personally. So, um, I love that. Explain to people how your gym, because I've been to many gyms but your gym is very different than other gyms. Just in general.
Speaker 3:Well, I think it's very unique because we have a large staff of registered dietitians and exercise physiologists and we really cater to one-on-one. You know we don't, we stick to what we're good at. You know we there's a lot of places that go and do large classes and that's not us. We are one-on-one, we are tailored. We realize that fitness, nutrition is a journey. This isn't an overnight success. So we hand hold our clients to get to their goals, and not only get to their goals but to keep their success going. So I think that marriage between that nutrition, fitness the dietitians work hand in hand with our trainers and, you know, getting that message to the clients to see success. We all know that. You know you can't all train a bad diet and you always hear like the abs are made in the kitchen. It's so true, the fitness is a huge part, but without the nutrition part, you know, we definitely cannot get there.
Speaker 2:Can you tell me a success story that you know? Even for you may have, you know, blown your mind in terms of what was achievable.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh, there's, there's so many. Just recently we have a gentleman that lost over 150 pounds and and you know it was so watching his journal. This wasn't overnight, I mean it's taken, you know it was so watching his journal. This wasn't overnight, I mean it's taken, you know, two and a half years. But just seeing the success is unbelievable. And you know it's funny because he everyone wants to obviously have the magic pill and wants to have the. You know a lot of people want to. You know get to those results fast. But he did it through hard work, through, you know, exercise on the daily and, you know, changing his eating habits and it's really saved his life and he's kept it off. You know 80% of people gain their weight back within the first year and 95% of people gain their weight back in five years. So it's so exciting to see this gentleman recently do it and keep it off and be an inspiration to so many.
Speaker 2:I definitely see the consistency in my life has helped not only with, you know, physically, but mentally and just being able to do a better job with my own work. And you know my own life and my own relationships, and my own life and my own relationships. Tell me what people should expect when they walk into your gym, your studio.
Speaker 3:So what I hear from so many people is wow, there's something about this place. There's a light, there's like a real big energy. I mean we see walks of life. We have teenagers for sports performance. We have every age possible, all the way to 90 years old. You know, there's a friendly smile, there's motivation everywhere, you know, and it's really something that is you really have to experience walking into our studio and being a part of the culture to really see it. It's quite amazing. Everyone's there to work out hard, to have fun, to sweat and to just have a good time. And you know, and that's what we're all about, from our music to our front desk people, you know, and we really live that out. I mean, we show our passion as trainers and dietitians. We give it, we are there, just we're. We're there to motivate our client. We want our clients to succeed just as much as they do. So we give a ton into it and it takes a lot to get people to have an overall change in lifestyle.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so, Krista. Your wife works with you. Guys work hand in hand. She's one of those friendly faces at the front desk that definitely brings the energy, a sense of calm, to the gym. And can you tell me, you raising your two girls, what advice would you give to parents about fitness and nutrition as they're raising children to have really good habits through the rest of their life?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's always tricky. I have two young girls and, um, you know, a lot of people feel that I'm probably like the person that's like you know, you, you can't eat sugar and you can't eat that. You know we take a different approach. You know we did get rid of the scales in our house. Um, we, you know, we realized that. You know we did get rid of the scales in our house. We, you know, we realized that. You know, women, especially young men, can have, you know, eating disorders. So we're very cautious of that.
Speaker 3:So we use that, we use the approach that you know we're eating healthy foods to give us energy, to feed our stomach and to give us muscles and things like that.
Speaker 3:We never use the word weight and also activity. I mean, it's so important to get the kids moving, whether it's walking, jogging, walking the dog Geez, the amount of sports these kids are doing now, keeping them active in some way and something that they like. They don't have to necessarily go to the gym and work out, but doing something they like to get the body moving. Cause, obviously, childhood obesity is on the rise. You know, 33% of people and children are obese, you know, and that can lead to diseases, especially, you know, type one diabetes and a lot of other diseases out there, and we're seeing kids in their twenties and thirts get diagnosed with high cholesterol, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes. So, you know, it's not just people that are over 40 that are getting these and it's from the habits that they have growing up and it's really important as parents that we model for that. Our children love us, they listen to us and by us modeling that they're more likely to do it.
Speaker 2:So you majored in college in nutrition and fitness. Is that correct? Yeah, how did you? As a child or as a young adult, you must have been interested in that. How did you come to that realization?
Speaker 3:Well, I come from a full fitness family. My oldest brother he was a college track athlete. My middle brother was a four-sport athlete bodybuilder. And I was a skinny kid I was the 135-pound weakling.
Speaker 3:So I got into sports but I got pushed around in my ninth grade and then my brother started getting me introduced in strength training. So in 10th grade I started and I was like, wow, my energy increased, confidence soared and I realized this is, this is amazing, Like it's really changed my life. And, uh, I want to do this for other people. I want other people to see what this feels like. It was addicting, and there's no better drug than you know. They always say there's nothing that tastes as good as fitness feels. And um, so I realized, wow, you can do this in college. So that's when the passion was born.
Speaker 3:I ended up getting into nutrition, learning the chemistry, the physiology of the body and seeing how food works. And it's amazing to me, what we eat changes our body, and not only physically. I think when we first started GymWay Fitness Nutrition Studios, everything was about weight and everything was about body transformations. It's much more than that now. It's about how's your sleep, How's your stress, How's your energy, How's your GI system. You know these are questions we ask even more than fitness and nutrition. So you know we want people to be feeling good every day. Why can't we feel good every day? And you know, I understand that it's a stressful world and I understand that we have vices and that's okay. You know, I think we got to have a lot of grace for ourselves. We're not perfect. It doesn't have to be perfect and we can still live a life and still enjoy things and feel good every day.
Speaker 2:I love that. So obviously you're living your passion. It's not only your passion.
Speaker 3:So obviously you're living your passion. It's not only your passion, but it's your business. Tell me what you know. A lot has to do with fitness, but we also love vegging. You know the one thing about being an entrepreneur and you know running businesses, you know many, many businesses is that we love the downtime.
Speaker 3:I'm a big believer in recovery. You know burnout is real. I've been in the industry for 25 years and you know you put in 10 hour days for 25 years. My work age is I'm 45. My work age is about 65. So so we realize at this time the body only can handle so much. So you know we have a lot of recovery, a lot of movie days, a lot of traveling and relaxing and also, for me personally, a lot of people ask a lot of traveling and relaxing. And also, for me personally, a lot of people ask you how do you keep this up? You know, because I still work out five days a week. But you know I do a lot of recovery, from chiropractor cold plunging, infrared saunas, foam rolling using the Theragun, using the Normatec pants for, you know, for leg compression, using a lot of brace and heat rehab massage when I can. You know there's a reason why the body can keep up all the years, and it's from a lot of the things we can do for recovery now.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. As an entrepreneur, one of the things I admire about you is some of the collaborations that you've created. You kind of did that before many of the influencers were doing it out there. You used, you know, you were on menus. You helped create recipes for people. Tell me a little bit about some of the collaborations you've you've done over the years that have, from an entrepreneur's standpoint, really helped elevate your brand. Yeah absolutely.
Speaker 3:I mean, we've been a community pillar for over 20 years and I've really number one is with our Lyft program. You know it started about. We started Lyft program 10 years ago. We were at the oceanfront providing exercise nutrition for our clients. We were doing bootcamps and some of the homeless started jumping into it doing the exercise and our clients were like you got to do something, let's get these people away. We're in a private class. So I went up to them and I said, hey, we have a private class. But then I thought these individuals need fitness nutrition more than anybody. I started doing research and 50% of the homeless are obese, onethird have high blood pressure. So we created an exercise nutrition program with the homeless and since then we've teamed up with companies like Walmart that lets us do grocery store tours and give us grants. We've received grants all around our community. We've town betting sponsors, all of our clothes. We have a ton of local businesses, such as Grid Fitness and Bamboo Yoga that provide exercise to our homeless program. So that's one big community partnership is through our Lyft program Also.
Speaker 3:We were in 2015,. We started having clients come in and ask us about restaurants what should we eat healthy here, what should we eat there? And we were printing out the menus and highlighting them. And then I thought why don't we just meet with the chefs and let's work with them to provide healthy options at these restaurants, and then it could be easier for us. We wanted to do this. We did a pro bono we never charged for anything like this. So we started meeting with the chefs at restaurants such as Citrus, such as Azar's, a lot of local places like Badass Coffee and Bilardi's, and we started creating Gym White Fitness approved items and these were items that were the healthiest that were on the menu.
Speaker 3:So it was a big hit. It was great for the restaurants. It would get them business. It was great for our clients because all we had to do is say, go to this restaurant and try the Gym White Fitness menus and they were seeing an increase in these items. People were getting healthier and it was just a great partnership. And then corporate wellness. You know we've been doing corporate wellness for a long time. We've teamed up with so many and you know these partnerships are great because it's getting the customers and they're getting the corporation employees, you know, healthier and happier. So that's a big program we like to promote.
Speaker 2:Well, we are so happy to have you in the community. You're such an asset to Virginia Beach and all the things that you do in terms of your business, but also your nonprofit, and you've alluded to that a little bit. Share one of the most exciting things that you have done this year with with that in terms of fundraising.
Speaker 3:So we have three fundraisers. The one is a lift-a-thon that's at the shack. It's every June and we had 120 lifters, we raised over $30,000 and it's been going on for 10 years and it's a bench press and deadlift competition going on for 10 years and it's a bench press and deadlift competition and we're going to be continuing that every year. A highlight is we had a community fitness party. It was a night out at the Kepler Country Club and we raised over $70,000 there and that was tours for our lift program and supporting the local homeless. We had 350 people there. It was a great gala.
Speaker 3:And then our most exciting event was we do a run across the region. Originally it was called White House to White House and we ran from Virginia Beach to the White House with 12 runners and two RVs and two lead cars and we had a relay up there. But just recently, the last two years, we uh started VB to NYC, so we had 14 runners run 356 miles in 36 hours. So it's a relay. Every runner has to run 30 miles and we raised 35,000. Um, we love that race. And next year we're going to Philly and we're going to go a different state each year, just to change it up a little bit. So three great fundraisers looking for volunteers. We're looking for people that are interested in being a part of it. They can go to liftfitnessfoundationorg for the Lift Foundation, and if they want to hear more of Gym White Fitness, they can go to gymwhitefitcom.
Speaker 2:And tell us where your studio is located in Virginia Beach?
Speaker 3:So we have our Virginia Beach studio on 848 First Colonial Road. It's on Medical Row, right by the Virginia Beach Hospital. And then we have our second location in downtown Norfolk right off of Granby Street. And then we do virtual training so we have clients here all around the country. And then we do virtual telehealth nutrition. So people they can verify with their insurance and CS. 90% of our insurance is covered, unlimited visits through most insurances. So um, and it's covered for free. So if they um contact us, um we can verify and they don't even have to leave their home. We can see a dietician virtually or come into our two studios.
Speaker 2:And some of your trainers do go out to homes. Is that correct?
Speaker 3:Yes, we are, we go everywhere, we go to corporations and train, we do home training, um, we do virtual training and then we have in-house. So, um, we are, we go everywhere, we go to corporations and train, we do home training, we do virtual training and then we have in-house. So we want to take out the barrier of you know, because time is one of the biggest reasons why people skip out on their workouts. So we want to try to minimize that and have as many options as possible to cut down on that.
Speaker 2:So tell us your website one more time on that.
Speaker 3:So tell us your website one more time. So for more information, they go to jimwhitefit. com for our nonprofit lift liftfitnessfoundation. org.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, jim White, for being here today.
Speaker 3:Appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpvirginiabeach. com. That's gnpvirginiabeach. com, or call 757-797-8852.