“I was sceptical at first but then…..”
If you’re a fitness professional you have heard these words before, either online, in an email, an article or sometimes in person. I’ve heard it plenty of times, almost like it’s from a script! Almost like it’s been practiced on people before me! Almost like this person is trying to side with me before……. Yep you guessed it, trying to sell me something. Finally, the answer to all my problems, where do I sign?
Now I’ve learnt to be pretty sceptical about most things that seem too good to be true, normally because they are. 5 years of studying Exercise Science has also given me a fair amount of rational thinking and reasoning when it comes to quick fixes. I also know the difference between correlation and causation and that n=1 is probably not the best sample size to base decisions on. Whilst anecdotal evidence is still evidence, biased anecdotal evidence from people that will gain financially just isn’t my jam.
Now let me say this, there are plenty of people who have achieved success while using such and such products. The key term there is “while using such and such” which is notably different from “because they used such and such”. Using these products normally goes hand in hand with traditional healthy lifestyle changes such as, exercising more, eating less, quitting smoking, quitting drinking, sleeping better etc. Remember correlation doesn’t equal causation. Many times, these things work due to creating a caloric deficit and tipping the energy scale in the right direction for fat/weight loss, something that is easily achieved with the aforementioned traditional lifestyle changes without you having to invest in anything other than maybe a gym membership.
What I want you to get from this little spiel is that; you should be very sceptical when people are trying to sell you things, think twice about what you are putting your money and faith into. More to the point is that you shouldn’t put your faith in products, put faith in yourself that you can be hard working and disciplined in your approach to health and fitness without the need for gimmicky bullshit.
I was sceptical at first and now I’m just over here sipping my regular, non-pyramid scheme, Lipton fucking tea like Kermit the Frog.
