Anyone who’s been in the fitness world a while has seen plenty of professional fitness scams. But for those just getting started, the scams can be hard to spot. Here are four common professional fitness scams to watch out for:
- You need this one miracle product! This seems like something everyone should know to avoid and yet every year “new” products come out that market themselves as the one silver bullet that will help end your fitness woes forever. Obviously, it isn’t true and this is a common professional fitness scam. There are lots of great fitness products out there that will make a real difference in helping you achieve your goals, including supplements, diet programs, health shakes, and exercise equipment. But the best of these products know that they are just one vital tool in a concerted effort that requires patience and hard work. They don’t pretend that that one product will get you to your goals alone.
- Exercise only. In a perfect world, as long as you put in your regular exercise time you could just eat whatever you wanted. But the truth is that’s not how fitness works. Fitness always requires a balance of regular exercise and healthy diet. There is no other way. Unfortunately, many exercise plans pretend that they will get you in shape with few or no dietary changes—and that’s basically a professional fitness scam. If you are very out of shape, exercise alone can help make noticeable changes but they’re very limited and fall off quickly. Not convinced? Look at the calories in your favorite snack and then check how many hours on the elliptical it takes to burn that many. Ouch.
- Temporary diets. There are lots of reasons you may opt for a temporary diet change, especially if you’re just testing it out to see if it’s something you can live with long term. But remember: a temporary diet gets temporary results. No matter how much weight you lose, once you go back to your old eating habits you will start to go back toward your old weight too. If a diet doesn’t seem like something you could stick to for years, it may be a professional fitness scam.
- Obscene calorie goals. This often goes hand in hand with temporary diets, but be very wary of fitness programs that involve very low calorie goals. Especially if those goals are only triple-digits. Eating so few calories is not only unsustainable, it’s also unsafe.
What professional fitness scams have you seen?
