Influential health and fitness coach, Dick Talens, has a warning for you: Be wary of the latest heath trends, gurus and products—many of them are just marketing scams.
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Besides detailing how good marketing helped him turn around his own online coaching service, he explains that in fitness, marketing is everything:
The more time I’ve spent in the fitness industry, the more I’ve learned how much marketing can make a difference. But there’s a fine a line between marketing yourself—a necessity if you want to make it in the industry—and becoming a dishonest con man. Unfortunately fitness is one industry where it’s easier to make it as the latter.
If you hear about a person or a product, it wasn’t necessarily because their methods work. It’s because they marketed their ass off. Those who rise to the top are simply those who are the best at selling their “wisdom,” even if it’s completely wrong. Elite fitness money makers know that getting your attention is all that matters, and they’ll go great lengths to build their businesses around capturing it.
But lying to make a quick buck is neither new nor particular to fitness … The difference in the fitness world is that the gullible pay with their wallet and their health. Falling for baseless recommendations for the umpteenth time will inevitably take a mental toll, especially if they’re from America’s favorite doctor (Newsweek).
Talens also debunks the ubiquitous before-and-after transformation pictures—like the ones you see in Hydroxycut’s “Pro Clinical” weight loss supplement—calling it a scam:
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At first glance, Hydroxycut looks like quite the panacea for fat loss. The spokesperson starts out bloated and soft, only to become “ripped” and muscular, presumably as a result of the pills. But in reality, this spokesperson is using a bodybuilding trick that the average Joe’s doesn’t know about.
In bodybuilding, there’s a concept called the “cutting and bulking” cycle. As explained by a bodybuilder friend of mine here:
Judging by the amount of mass that he has, the spokesperson is clearly a bodybuilder. In the first picture, he’s at the end of his “bulk” (a weight gaining phase focusing on building muscle). The second picture is him on a cutting phase (weight loss phase focusing on losing fat). Bodybuilders do this all the time, and while most people think this picture looks miraculous, it’s quite typical…nothing to see here.
He also points out the dangers of believing “science-based marketing,” where you “create a product, make scientific claims, and inundate the consumer with more research than they can handle.” Talens calls out Dave Asprey AKA “The Bulletproof Executive”—who created a cultural phenomenon around putting butter in your coffee, and is today one of the fastest rising names in the fitness industry—purporting that his research is a sham.
Armi Legge, founder of EvidenceMag, and well known in the (legitimate) evidence-based fitness world, was once Asprey’s right-hand research guy. Legge reveals to Talens:
I helped launch many of the products that Dave sold. One such product was Bulletproof Whey. After the marketing page went up, Dave was concerned that it didn’t sound “scientific enough,” so he tasked me with finding research to support one of the compounds.
After informing Dave that there were no studies that supported his claims, he responded “Just go on PubMed and find something with the compound in the title. It doesn’t have to be related to our claim…No one’s going to read the study anyway.”
Finally, Talens offers three ways to identify a snake oil salesman:
- Ask yourself “Is this person trying to sell me something?”
If the answer is no, you probably have less to worry about, but you should “follow the money.”
If the answer is “yes, this person is trying to sell me something,” it doesn’t automatically mean that they’re fraudulent, but be skeptical. Take a look at the evidence used to promote the product. Never trust the salesman and keep in mind the tactics discussed earlier: transformation pictures are easily doctored, only “good” testimonials are shown, and even science can be manipulated.
- Ask if the Seller Cares About Your Long-Term Results
If there’s a misalignment of incentives, do your homework. Make sure that any review is from a third party website, and not directly from the source. If a testimonial seems too good to be true, it probably is.
- Build a List of Trusted Sources
Once a source—an online resource, an “expert”, and so on—demonstrates trustworthiness time and time again, add it to your list of vetted sources. Continuously refine your list, adding the ones that prove themselves and throwing out the ones that lose their credibility.
Treat the industry like you’re walking alone at night in a dangerous neighborhood. Stay cautious, avoid sketchy-looking alleys, and only walk along brightly-lit areas.
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ForMen takeaway: There’s no “magic” pill out there that will quickly and miraculously slim you down or bulk you up. Talens gives the simple, yet boring, recipe: build more muscle through resistance training, reduce your body fat through diet and exercise, and avoid magic tricks while learning everything you can from reliable sources. And always use common sense. As Talens puts it: “You have more common sense than you think, because sometimes common sense is as easy as realizing that someone’s weight loss advice is to eat more butter.”
Curated Article from Lifehacker
Relevant Sources and Studies:
Newsweek
Evidence Mag
Dick Talens
