The Fitness Media has a lot to Answer For…

The Fitness media has a lot to answer for.

Lose 20lbs in a week! Add an inch to your arms TODAY! Reveal your abs in a WEEKEND.

Thanks, fitness media, you’ve fucked everything up. With magazine covers like the one below (drop 5kgs now?! How exactly – by dropping that dumbbell you’re carrying?!), the fitness media have skewed the perception of what is possible in the gym.

We live in a world where everything is quick. With the internet you can find anything out in seconds. You can have a takeaway delivered in minutes and you can buy items on Amazon and have them delivered within the same day. We’re not running out of patience, we’ve run out of it completely.

I’ve seen and heard of people who after damaging their bodies with no exercise and a terrible diet for 30 years expect to be in great shape again in fortnight.

It doesn’t work like that, I’m afraid. No matter what Men’s Health and the rest of the fitness media tells you, if you’re 40lbs overweight you won’t have a six pack within a week. For the most part, you’ve got the body you deserve – it’s a direct reflection of your habits.

What happened to ‘patience is a virtue’?

Our perception of work has changed too. Everything is convenient now, which is a great thing when it comes to tasks such as housework and travel, but there’s a carryover into other areas of life. So many people are so lazy now.

Last week I was watching a show called ‘Eat Well for Less‘. Basically it’s a show where families are shown how they can reduce their food bills. Inevitably the families also eat a pretty shoddy diet, so the subtext is that with a few tweaks and little bit more cooking from scratch, they can both save money and improve their health.

The Scott family were the subject of the show last week and their diet was basically freezer food. The meals being served to the kids were beige, processed crap. The kids were being fed this for two reasons – their parents (by their own admission) were too lazy to cook real food and didn’t really know how to cook anyway.

With the fitness media making the promises it does, it’s created a monster where going to the gym for a week entitles you the body of an athlete. Shows like ‘The Biggest Loser’ don’t help matters at all.

Thankfully, more and more of the former contestants stories are coming out and even one of the personal trainers on the show, Gillian Michaels has quit, claiming she was worried about the lack of care for the contestants.

To continue with the controversy, on the UK version of the show, the late Angie Dowds was sacked for telling her team to eat a diet of only fruit and nuts in the weeks prior to their weigh-ins so their weight loss would be more dramatic.

When watching these shows, you have to understand that TV is about the drama, the story and the human ups and downs. Normal is boring in TV world. According to producers, nobody wants to watch a show with normal results. I’m not even sure I blame the producers entirely – maybe the wider fitness media has led them to believe that you can safely drop 100lbs in 3 months?

In the case of weight loss and fitness shows, ‘reality’ TV is anything but. You’re never going to lose the dramatic weight these guys do without 24/7 monitoring of your diet, multiple daily exercise sessions and removal from a normal environment whereby you have someone controlling your food intake for you and providing you with no access to unhealthy foods.

Even if you did have access to all of those facilities, you wouldn’t want to lose such large amounts of weight so quickly – there’s likely to be dramatic effects on your health.

I think part of the reason the show has such awful long term success rates is down the very reason people lose so much weight on it – the extremes. The show is designed to help people lose a huge amount of weight in a short period of time. It’s extreme. It’s dramatic. But it’s not sustainable. Unfortunately most people don’t understand this and compare their own results to those on the show.

I myself met a former winner of the UK version of the show at a fitness convention and I was quite taken aback by how big he looked only a few weeks after the show had finished. He had lost a lot of weight on the show, but by the looks of things had gained much of it back already.

We need to rebalance our expectations. Learn that consistency, not perfection is key to long term health, fitness and wellbeing success.

A rise in #fitspo’s in the wider fitness media has lead many people (women, mostly) to believe that fitness models look amazing all year round, when that’s simply not true. I’m not suggesting that out of season they balloon into obesity, far from it, but they certainly aren’t as lean as they are in competition or photoshoot season. If even they don’t practice perfection 52 weeks per year (and it’s their full time occupation), what chance have you or the rest of us got?

None.

If you only take away one thing from this article, remember that just like pictures of music stars, models and actresses are airbrushed to make them look better, so are pictures of fitness models. They are an unrealistic representation of what a person truly looks like. I know – I’ve met plenty of them in real life.

So back to my main point – patience.

You can achieve quick results, if you’re willing to work for them. Remember though, the faster your weight loss, the more dramatic your behaviour change has to be. If you want to drop 1-3lbs per week, you can do that with a little discipline and a sensible exercise regime. If you want to lose more, you have to be far stricter and remember, that comes at a price.

Instead, I’d suggest you adopt a healthier, more sustainable outlook on the whole thing. Exercise consistently and eat well as often as you can yet still allowing yourself the occasional treat – it’s good for your mind as well as your body.

Finally, remember to BE PATIENT! The results will come, just do the right things often enough and you’ll get there. Ignore the fitness media and focus on yourself.

If you are looking for a handy guide, this book is great place to start. It’s written by Nick Mitchell, one of the worlds leading body transformation specialists and shows you the journey that his co-author Joe Warner went through to achieve the physique on the cover, so is a realistic example of progress.

P.S. I’m giving away a FREE eBook ‘101 Health and Fitness Tips’ to everyone who subscribes to my VIP email list. By joining the list you’ll have access to exclusive content, discounts, offers and products from both me and selected partners. Click here to download!