The fitness and nutrition industry are in the business of selling you a solution to one of two problems:
1) Weight loss
2) Gaining Muscles
Things like ‘health’ and ‘fitness’ are just side effects of looking better. In reality nobody would buy a fitness program if it made you healthier but at the same time made you fatter and weaker.
So when it comes to fitness and nutrition marketing it’s all about the look. And this is where the marketers use impossibility to sell you a never ending list of items.
Muscle Building – Selling the Impossible Size
When it comes to muscle building, marketers show you models that are using steroids and tell you that you can look the same if you buy their special product. The part they leave out is that you can never achieve the look that the model has without steroids. You as the consumer are assuming that you’re not being lied to and try their product hoping for the results they promise. When you don’t see the results you end up blaming yourself for not working hard enough or not using enough products to get there. The answer then becomes a new product, or a stack of new products, or a more complicated workout, or a more complicated nutrition program.
At no point does the thought go through your mind that perhaps the look of the model is only attainable with drugs and that no amount of supplements you buy and take will get you there.
In other words, they sell you the promise of an IMPOSSIBLE look. And some gullible people will spend thousands of dollars chasing this ideal and never get there.
Weight Loss – Telling you it’s impossible when it really is possible.
On the weight loss side of things they tell you that weight loss is IMPOSSIBLE without their product. This of course is a bold faced lie as weight loss is completely possible without any special products at all (as it is simply a matter of less calories in than calories out).
They will show you before and after pictures of people who have had good success dropping body weight and tell you that the only way this is possible is with their special supplement/diet/workout.
Dieting isn’t easy (even though it is simple) and because it is so hard it’s easy for marketers to sell you an excuse of why you’re having so much trouble with it and why their solution is the thing that you’ve been missing all along.
The reality is that dropping weight is simple and doesn’t require any special products and is very possible.
So it is a story of impossibility for fitness marketing on both sides and as long as you believe them you’ll always be susceptible to the next scam. Just think of all the diets than have come and gone in the past 10-20 years. How could all of them be so different? The answer is they can’t. They all have the same fundamental truth, and that is less calories.
Go through any supplement store and look at all the different muscle building supplements there are. Now think to yourself if they all worked why are there new products every year promising the ‘secret’ to muscle building? The unfortunate answer is that most of them don’t help you to build muscle at all, and especially the amount of muscle they show you in their ads.
As soon as you realize and accept what is truly possible for muscle building and weight loss the answers become clear and simple. Once you see how simple both muscle building and weight loss can be, you can then put your effort in the gym and your money towards only the things that work, and stop wasting time and money and heartache on the things that don’t.
John Barban has a Masters Degree in human biology and nutrition and is a former varsity strength and conditioning coach. John has formulated many sports supplements for both muscle building and weight loss that are currently available on the market and he is the author of the Adonis Effect and the Adonis Index Workout System.
