The Fitness Industry Scam

Culture

Are you ever at the super market and see someone in line who is overweight loading up on the junk food and pop. You may wonder “why is that individual buying that”. Or you might be that person which can’t resist? Exercise and dieting can be extremely hard for a lot of people especially with how addicting sugar can be. Additionally, it does not help that you have a whole host of fitness companies and fitness professionals making promises about blasting away your fat or building a chiseled physique through the easy consumption of their products.

How Is The Fitness Industry Being Defined?

When you Google “fitness”, “health” or any of those buzz words and visit one of the websites that usually comes up first what will you find?Archives of articles promoting the ideal body type and body weight along with pictures of chiseled individuals. You will also see a lot of articles with headlines a long the lines of “lose weight fast”, “burn your fat”, and “blast your flab now”.

With that being said what is health? From the perspective of these fitness sites and magazines it is telling us health is about looking a certain way or fitting into the perfect image of their models in the article thumbnail. Most importantly they tell us fat is bad! Fat should be burned , cut and shredded from your body right away!

Imagine if we see fitness sites changing the discussion to represent more scientific facts and the importance of movement.

In the book “Fit for Consumption: Sociology and the Business of Fitness.” Dr. Jennifer Smith Maguire asks if fitness is good for us? She suggests no it is not. She discusses how the large growth in the industry has provided excuses to ignore very important health risks. For example what is the point of investing in improving the food or creating walk-able communities when you can just buy a weight loss pill?

This has allowed for a lot less accountability among individuals as people always want to look for the easy solution. Companies are willing to promote, endorse and sell the so called easy solution in the form of pills and supplements.

The simple solution would be to eat better, consume less calories and move more. As it turns out we find humans are not always the best at consuming less calories and expending more if it’s not required. A 2011 Lancet study found that the growth of obesity worldwide has been because of people responding naturally to their environment—one characterized by cheap, empty calories, and sedentary lifestyles and occupations.

If we circle back to our example at the start in the grocery store. We have the wall of fitness magazines on one side and all the sugary treats on the other side. Why don’t we ever see the fitness industry questioning how accessible all the treats are. Now I know we can’t just eliminate them from grocery stores and I may not have the final solution. But instead of just promoting the easy solutions why aren’t we not questioning the underlining problems. The fitness industry should be advocating for communities with more active transportation and questioning how normal it is regularly consume a surplus of sugar throughout the day. Many individuals have been let down by the fitness industry in thinking the solution is crash diets and 2 week boot camp classes.

In the end it is important to promote movement, avoid the fitness industry scams where they promote the fast and easy solutions and most importantly figure out how we can diagnose and remedy the underlying problems.

In order to make a change in the society we have to change the environment!