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The sun isn’t up when Nolan Nevels heads out each morning to the YMCA near his home in Knoxville.

As he walks through the facility doors and greets staff, he’s already thinking about the fitness center members he’ll coach through personal training sessions that day.

Being a personal trainer wasn’t something the 71-year-old ever imagined when he first visited the YMCA  three years earlier, overweight with high blood pressure and pre-diabetes. He’d also recently had knee and hip replacement surgeries.

“I took medication for my health conditions, and I was what you’d call a yo-yo dieter,” Nolan says. “I’d exercise, lose some weight, then I’d get off track with work and trips and put it back on.”

A conversation with an acquaintance who’d lost a significant amount of weight put Nolan on a new path.

 

A program that made waves

“My BlueCross BlueAdvantage plan covers membership for senior adults at many fitness centers,” Nolan says. “I signed up at the YMCA that’s near my home and immediately started water aerobics.”

Before he started the sessions in the pool, he often struggled with everyday tasks,  like putting on his shoes and socks. But he was soon moving and feeling better and added other exercise classes to his routine.

“Within the first year, people were saying they noticed a difference in how I looked and moved,” Nolan says.

He was asked to take classes to become a personal trainer by YMCA staff when they noticed how he encouraged and motivated other fitness center members.

Along the way, he got guidance from a BlueCross dietician who helped him understand how what he ate affected his weight, blood pressure and pre-diabetes.

“In each conversation, I could tell that Nolan was motivated to keep improving his health and fitness,” says BlueCross Registered Dietician Karen Lawson. “We discussed how the foods he chose could be building blocks to help with his workouts while also helping him manage his blood sugar and blood pressure.”

She also helped Nolan get set up on the BlueCross CareTN app which helped give him more resources related to food choices and let him track what he ate as well as logging how many steps he took each day.

“From my own journey, I know there are days when you don’t want to do this,” Nolan says. “But people helped me. Now I want to help others, and I want them to know that as you age, you can continue to improve your life journey.”