I ask this as someone who has been taken in by a lot of fitness bullshit.
I’ve taken the life-changing supplements and bought the weird gadgets and tried the “revolutionary” fitness routines.
I mean, a lot of the marketing is honestly really slick, and it’s tough to know what you don’t know.
So I ask this as a person who’s gone through it and just wants to help other people avoid a lot of the predatory traps that so many people in this industry love to set…
Can we please stop falling for all the predatory nonsense my industry is so famous for doing?
Most of the fitness trends don’t even make sense when we think about them for more than 12 seconds.
I mean, let’s look at the current “weighted vest” trend.
I don’t know who started it or where it came from.
I do know that everywhere I go, I see middle-aged women wearing 10lb weighted vests.
Which means a bunch of internet vultures are using predatory marketing strategies to target women who are concerned about menopause.
What do the claims seem to be?
“Walking with a weighted vest will prevent or reverse osteoporosis.”
“Walking with a weighted vest will help you get stronger.”
“Walking with a weighted vest will help you lose body fat.”
The same shit they always say when they want to sell things to women over 40.
And I’m sure this trend really popped off when some doctor got on board and started selling weighted vests…
But it’s just so clearly bullshit.
If walking with a 10lb weighted vest prevented osteoporosis, then fat people wouldn’t get osteoporosis.
Some fat people do get osteoporosis.
If walking with a 10lb weighted vest helped you get significantly stronger, then fat people wouldn’t be weaker than they want to be.
Some fat people are still weaker than they want to be.
If walking with a 10lb weighted vest helped you to lose substantial amounts of body fat, then people would never even be able to put on substantial amounts of body fat because it would be a self-correcting system – meaning whenever we gained a bit of fat, we’d automatically increase calorie expenditure and immediately lose all that weight again.
True for very few people, but most of us do not have anything even close to this level of metabolic adaptability.
And yet literally everywhere I go (gym… park… Costco…) there’s a middle-aged woman walking around in a weighted vest.
Now I have no desire to be a turd in someone’s exercise punch bowl.
If you like walking with a weighted vest, then please keep doing that.
Another thing that I find really annoying is people who shit on others’ chosen form of movement.
Most of the people I coach (including some runners) don’t move enough throughout their day.
If you’ve found a form of movement that makes you happy and keeps you going, then that’s great.
I support all forms of movement, from strength training to running to bungee fitness classes to frolicking through the forest on a pogo stick.
That’s not the point.
The point is the misalignment between promises and outcomes.
The point is the predatory marketing strategies that cause people to spend money on useless bullshit and delay them from actually doing something that would be genuinely helpful.
There are things you can do that will help you achieve your goals – or at least get you closer to them.
Unfortunately, they’re not particularly interesting and they don’t come with a nifty affiliate code that saves you 10% and gives a monetary kickback to whoever convinced you to buy it.
They’re typically things like…
“Lift relatively heavy things.”
“Do cardio.”
“Eat protein and vegetables.”
“Fuel your activities.”
“Sleep.”
Now I’m aware this sounds like a lot of victim blaming.
So let me be perfectly clear…
I think all of these people are vultures who should be prosecuted for false marketing and whatever profits they’ve made off their lies should be taken from them.
Yet that isn’t going to happen.
So we have to be better about not falling for the bullshit.
When someone makes grandiose claims that seem a little too good to be true…
They probably are.
Especially when it comes to things that are hard to do.
Like preventing osteoporosis or getting stronger.
If you’d like to follow someone who provides actual, helpful information on women’s health, I highly recommend Lauren Colenso-Semple, PhD.
Click here for Lauren’s Instagram
Hope you have a good weekend.