Fitness and diet is a multibillion dollar industry that cashes in on your awareness of the importance of health and a cultural message that everybody is overweight. Some of these programs are valuable and healthy. Others use junk science, unconfirmed claims and other strategies to separate the uninformed from their money. As if losing weight weren't hard enough, you also have to work to determine which products are actually worthwhile.
Extreme Claims
One sign that a fitness or diet claim may be exaggerated is if it promises rapid and dramatic results. According to health counselor Maya Paul, effective weight loss comes at a rate of just a pound or two per week. Regarding fitness, the average person can expect to gain just 1/2 pound of muscle each week, CNN health correspondent Melina Jampolis reports. You can have dramatic results or you can have rapid results - but not both.
Healthy Diet
Consumers should be wary of diet plans that ask you to eat food in proportions disparate from a normal healthy diet. This is true whether the plan encourages you to eat too little of one kind of food or too much of another kind. Compare the recommendations of any diet plan against free resources such as the USDA or Harvard food pyramids. Not all disproportionate diets are necessarily bad - low-carb diets can produce safe results over the short term, for example. However, any diet that advises this kind of practice warrants additional research.
Exercise Equipment
Some fitness programs recommend exercise that uses commonly available equipment, or no equipment at all. Others tailor a training regimen around a piece of equipment they have patented -- and sell at a premium price. Although some equipment is perfectly viable for the exercise program they come with, it bears considering whether or not you can get the same results using less-specialized -- and less-expensive -- programs.
Fitness and Diet Traps
Some fitness and diet industry marketers use very specific strategies to trick you into believing their claims. Some of the most common gimmicks include "secret" ingredients, false studies, celebrity testimonials and free trials. These kinds of offers have grown so common that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has issued a report warning consumers to "adopt a healthy skepticism" about claims made by fitness and diet industry advertising.
The Grandmother Test
Some fitness and diet products are effective and high in quality. Others are released by well-intentioned but misinformed groups. Still others are cynical attempts to make money off of your fear of being fat. When considering a fitness or diet product, the FTC advises holding it up to the "Grandmother Test." As many grandmothers have warned over the centuries, "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."
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