Butter in Coffee and Other Cons: Stories From a Fitness Insider
Three years after we founded Fitocracy, we launched a new online coaching service to start making money. We needed a way to attract people, but no one looked interested.
It didn’t make sense. The sales email I sent out had all the required fields marked: it was well positioned, attractive, and clearly rated – the exact formula I was taught at Wharton Marketing 101.
In desperation, I confessed to my mentor, a respected fitness professional whom I had followed for years.
“Well, let me take a look at the email you send to your users,” he suggested. I forwarded – what I thought then was a good sales letter. I soon learned that this was not the case.
“This is terrible,” he said, causing my ego (and the mental image of our profit) to sway. “The user does not have a purchase deadline. Limit the group to 10 remaining spots and tell them that it will end in 24 hours. Oh, also qualify everyone by saying you’re only looking for people who want serious results. “
His instructions seemed arbitrary and unnecessary. Surely no one will be gullible enough to fall under the false impression of scarcity. But I did as I was told by setting up the email to talk about the “limited” nature of the group. I put them on the air, not really convinced that anything would improve.
I was wrong. Ten minutes after the new email was sent, there was a sale. Then another one. A stream of registrations poured in. In the end, we had to turn down customers and make a waiting list. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy; by pretending to be a scarcity, we actually created it. A simple tweet-size resize was enough to resurrect our marketing efforts.
Then it dawned on me: this man was not just a fitness expert … he was also a marketer. I read his emails and blog posts for about a year, and while much of his work added value to my life, every content was deliberate, well-thought-out advertising.
The more time I spent in the fitness industry, the more I learned how much marketing can make a difference. But there is a fine line between marketing itself – a must if you want to be successful in the industry – and becoming a dishonest swindler. Unfortunately, fitness is an industry that makes it easier to do the latter.
In fitness, marketing is everything
Marketing itself isn’t necessarily bad. Everyone in the fitness industry – or any other industry – who is trying to make a living knows they need marketing to survive. I’m on. The alternative is to find a nine to five job or worse: work in a corporate gym and get stuck crushing the weights of some tanned napkin that comes just to pump up before heading out to the club to pick up Jager bombs.
Unfortunately, marketing is all about making a name for yourself. Those who truly change lives with fact-based methods (like Alan Aragon ) will always be ignored by the likes of marketers without a conscience like Wani Hari, also known as Food Babe .
But that’s the nature of the industry. Competence and experience are in no way associated with success. The unsuspecting mainstream believes popularity is based on knowledge and experience. This assumption is completely wrong.
One thing I’ve learned about the industry is that experts – real experts – usually argue about everything and rarely agree . In fact, the consensus among them is that celebrities like Dr. Oz , Tracy Anderson, and Food Babe are full of shit.
If you hear about a person or a product, it’s not necessarily because their methods work. This is because they sold their ass. Those who are the best at selling their “wisdom”, even if it is completely wrong, rise to the top. The elite fitness money makers know it’s important to get your attention, and they will do their best to build their business around that.
For example, I talked for a while with the creator of Force Factor ™, one of the most successful supplements in history. To be clear, I don’t have a strong opinion on the effectiveness of the product ( however these guys have ), but it’s worth noting how it is marketed.
Most companies hire a regular SEO consultant or social media manager who has just graduated from college. Instead, parent company Force Factor is hiring the smartest people at Harvard and MIT to turn them into engineers, marketers, and data scientists. In fact, you’ve probably seen their ads before. This is because there is a building full of potential bankers, Google and Facebook employees working on the same mission: to get you to click on an ad, open a wallet, and enter your credit card information.
But lying to make money fast is not news and is nothing special about fitness. In fact, research shows that “snake oil sellers” have been around since homo sapiens discovered snakes. [Quote required.] The difference in the fitness world is that the gullible pay with their wallet and their health. Once again, falling into unreasonable recommendations will inevitably affect mental health, especially if they come from America’s favorite doctor .
In other industries, potentially irreparable damage to reputation could scare off potential snake oil sellers. But it is not in fitness that the performers of these charades are rewarded by being considered gurus in their field. Never trust a seller without due diligence. Some will do anything to make money quickly. They, too, can be richly rewarded for this.
Don’t believe your eyes
One of the most common marketing scams is before and after images of transformation. If you’ve never seen them, here are the notes on the rocks: Some average Joe or Jane buys a book, an app, or uses some innovative method (which the instructors certainly don’t want you to know about) just to to come. looked like the Incredible Hulk. Place these pictures side by side and you can’t deny the results … can you?
In fact, making these six cubes is ironically nonsexual. In my ten years from obese teen to fitness fanatic , I’ve learned that the recipe is simple but boring: Build muscle with strength training, reduce fat through diet and exercise, and avoid tricks by learning everything you can from reliable sources.
This can take years or even decades. After the first two years of progress for beginners, you will be limited to five pounds of lean muscle mass per year , and shortly thereafter, you will be down to two pounds of muscle mass per year. But this process has not been implemented, so the scammers turned to a different formula:
- Create a “revolutionary, revolutionary” product.
- Find a representative who is already in great shape to promote and claim that the product did it.
Fitness author James Fell talked about how Bowflex uses this formula in their commercials:
If you have any doubts that these models haven’t gotten a muscular hairless physique with Bowflex and its patented Power Something technology, then Google “Bowflex casting” and you’ll find recruiting agencies looking for ultra-thin sports rats with colored contact lenses. … throwing on this future hanger for three easy payments – too much money.
But that still doesn’t explain those gorgeous side-by-side transformation photos like the ones you see in Hydroxycut’s Pro Clinical Slimming Supplement . At first glance, Hydroxycut looks like a panacea for weight loss. The representative initially swells and becomes soft, but then becomes “torn” and muscular, presumably as a result of taking the pills. But in reality, this rep is using a bodybuilding trick that the average Joe doesn’t know about.
In bodybuilding, there is a concept called the “cycle of contraction and weight gain.” As my bodybuilding friend explained here:
Judging by its mass, the press secretary is clearly a bodybuilder. In the first picture, he is at the end of his “mass” (the phase of weight gain with an emphasis on building muscle mass). In the second picture, he is in the contraction phase (weight loss phase with emphasis on fat loss). Bodybuilders do this all the time, and while most people think this picture looks wonderful, it is quite typical … not much to see here.
What most people don’t know is that fitness magazine covers don’t stay that way all year round . They don’t even look that long because they probably went through a series of water manipulation techniques to create a peak but short-lived physique for a photo shoot. In fact, many bodybuilders go through extreme physical changes quite regularly.
As an extreme example, here is professional bodybuilder Lee Priest at the end of the mass gain phase, and here he is approaching the end of the contraction phase . The ups and downs of these cycles create a great opportunity to “transform” images – a fact that marketers are well aware of.
Hydroxycut may work to some extent (if you’re willing to put up with the health risks that come with many supplements), but that doesn’t matter. This does not work to the extent that the images convey, unless, of course, you are a trained bodybuilder who is highly skilled in switching between muscle building phases and fat burning phases.
But by and large, capitalizing on consumers’ ignorance of bodybuilding is relatively innocent compared to another common marketing tactic: steroids.
In the industry, steroids are usually taken if your job is to look torn. But taking steroids in bodybuilding competitions is not at all the same as in the Tour de France. In fact, if bodybuilding competitions are not labeled “natural” (which no one observes anyway), it is not cheating; it is expected. Professional bodybuilders dive into chemicals like fish in water … many take up to one gram of testosterone every week. (For context, the average male produces three to seven milligrams a day.)
Legality aside, I don’t see anything wrong with others using steroids to improve their physique. Just like smoking or drinking alcohol, they should be able to risk their health. Hell, I have a lot of friends who are helped by drugs and these substances really allow them to work harder.
But the problem is that in fitness, steroids are used not only for personal purposes or at bodybuilding shows. They are used to lying to the unsuspecting mainstream.
Industry insiders sometimes play a game called “Nice or Not?” where they try to determine if someone’s physique was natural or if it was fortified with good old “vitamin C.” Do you know why the game exists? This is because many who need chemical help hide it.
Their secrecy is not accidental. They are careful because they then promote the product. Perhaps this is a new discovery, which “coaches do not want you to know,” or “a strange trick, which increases testosterone levels by 500%”, while neglecting to inform unsuspecting consumers about their testosterone injections, Winstrol and trenbolone . After all, if seasoned vets can’t tell if their physique is a byproduct of Vitamin S, how can the Average Joe?
I have no clear indication of how common this “bait and swap” occurs, as obviously no research has been done. But according to friends associated with companies selling many of the products you come across, the “after” images are very often the result of vitamin S flowing through someone’s veins.
Takeaway: Always look at transformation with skepticism. Hell, if I could create my own fake transform using pictures taken at intervals of just five seconds , manipulating with nothing more than posture and flexion, imagine what someone else could have done, spending much more time, effort and, most importantly, a lot of drugs.
Science is not always what it seems
At this point, I may have accidentally likened consumers to gullible sheep who tend to buy empty promises from the fitness industry. But I really don’t blame them. They are just a product of a broken industry .
In fact, by mid-October 2012, some consumers were starting to get smarter.
Communities like Reddit’s / r / fitness have begun to scrutinize and debunk a lot of industry scum with science. Notable sites such as Examine.com (originated from Reddit) were launched to disprove claims of many useless supplements, such as Dr. Oz’s recommended raspberry ketones , by comparing them to a large body of scientific research.
This is the first time the science of health and fitness has become so accessible to normal people. For some, this science has been an incredibly powerful – almost magical – tool. It was evidence-based and objective, innocent and pure, and only existed to inform you and help you improve. After all, how can science be anything else? Facts are facts.
But just like the battle between virus creators and their anti-virus adversaries, marketers looking to make money fast are catching up quickly.
I first noticed a new type of “evidence-based marketing” after purchasing the Carb Backloading Diet book from D.H. Kiefer. Carbohydrate retention has a compelling premise: By following a simple set of rules (based on science, of course), you can lose weight by starving fat cells and enjoying your favorite food. Cherry turnovers? Ice cream? Free? Fuck yes. You would be an idiot if you didn’t want to.
Each chapter reads like a scientific textbook of sorts, containing recommendations backed up by an impressive volume of references that rivals the National Archives. These links were hidden … uh … neatly tucked away at the end. (In order, of course, not to distract the reader.)
But closer examination reveals that not only some of Kiefer’s references are irrelevant to the case, they actually contradict his main statements . Ultimately, this became his main MO.
However, Kiefer was one of the first to implement a powerful marketing plan: create a product, make scientific claims, and inundate the consumer with more research than he could possibly conduct. (You can’t argue with science. Are you an anti-Waxer?) In Kiefer’s case, this method was rewarded. A close source told me that there was a six-digit number in the book. For a fitness e-book, it was a resounding success.
While Kiefer may have been one of the first to use the manipulation of science as a marketing tool, he did not create a cultural phenomenon, such as adding oil to coffee.
In December 2010, Dave Asprey, better known as “Bulletproof Executive”, followed me on Twitter . He had 15 followers and I have never heard of him. Today he is one of the fastest growing names in the fitness industry, creating a cultural phenomenon, adding oil to coffee and gathering a loyal fan base who listens to his every word. In fact, he just launched FATwater ™ with the backing of Trinity Ventures .
While Asprey’s products are based on lies, his story is compelling. Mr. Asprey allegedly lost 100 pounds without exercise and also raised his IQ by 15 points, all because he spent $ 300,000 hacking his own biology, putting himself at the forefront of biohacking “research”. But don’t just take his word for it. His site is littered with testimonials from people who have achieved similar success using his methods.
So what is the secret of these methods? To do this, I reached out to Armie Legge, founder of EvidenceMag and the rock star of the (legitimate) world of evidence-based fitness.
Armie is an interesting guy. He is only twenty years old and is de facto one of the good guys in the industry, with a Caring Bear conscience and Boy Scout manners. Imagine my surprise when I learned that he was once Asprey’s right hand in research – research that turned out to be fake:
I helped launch many of the products that Dave sold. Bulletproof Whey was one such product. After the marketing page came up, Dave was concerned that this didn’t sound “scientific enough,” so he asked me to find research to support one of the compounds.
After informing Dave that there was no research to back his claims, he replied, “Just go to PubMed and look for anything that has a compound in the name. This should not be related to our statement … In any case, no one will read the study. “
Bulletproof Executive was truly obsessed with science, not for knowledge, but because he knew science was a powerful sales tool. In another example from Armie, he was named “Principal Investigator” of Asprey’s The Better Baby. Here is the alleged conversation that took place:
Armie: I’m happy to do some research, but it will take forever to find good research on this topic.
Dave: You don’t have to take a lot of your time. Just make sure you find 10-15 studies in each chapter that “look” like they should be there.
For Armie, this was the last straw. In fact, he decided not to complete this task completely. I suspect this is because counseling a child based on nonsense can have unpleasant side effects such as … well, you know … death . But Armie didn’t have to complete all the studies because Dave did it for him. When Armie looked through some of the material, he found “reference” links to “random alternative health bullshit sites” without any research. Armie can’t remember the exact names, but it was something like “makeyourbabybetter.com”.
As for the reviews:
For every good “feedback” they received, there was much more that said the methods did nothing for them. I was told to ignore these people. One day, Dave had to solve the problems of someone who was not losing weight and told them that they were probably not eating enough oil.
Are you saying eat more oil to lose weight? In case you haven’t guessed by now, the entire weight loss oil recommendation is as real as Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. To be clear, there is nothing wrong with butter … but just drinking it won’t help you lose weight. For safety reasons, Alan Aragon , the factual researcher mentioned earlier, explains it anyway:
Consuming more oil for weight loss is just as foolish as stabbing yourself in the neck to reduce bleeding. It just doesn’t make sense. There is nothing natural in any particular food to burn fat, especially butter, which is much easier to store as fat than, say, protein-dominated foods or even most carbohydrate foods, and a wide variety of foods that are not nearly as energetic. … -dense. Compared to other foods, oil also does not cause much saturation. Of course, there is no shortage of obese people who consume butter on a daily basis.
As for the legitimacy of Asprey’s own transformation, you can decide for yourself. It’s worth noting that Asprey (openly) has been receiving testosterone injections for about ten years, which he says is simply “replacement therapy” to normalize his levels. But then again, Asprey has a lot of complaints.
How to identify snake oil sellers
The good news is that simply being aware of what’s going on in the industry will make you think more critically. However, how do you tell Examine.com from Bulletproof Executive when both claim science is on their side?
1. Ask yourself, “Is this person trying to sell me something?”
If the answer is no, you probably have nothing to worry about, but you should “watch the money.”
For example, Examine.com does not sell the items it is reviewing. Its main business model is selling evidence-based digest to healthcare professionals. Using this model, Examine is likely to be successful only when it provides objective, quality evidence.
On the other hand, while Dr. Oz does not directly sell the products he promotes, he makes money from watching. He has an incentive to enthusiastically promote products and excite people with magic pills. He also has to come up with new content for each episode. A quick search of some of the products he is promoting reveals that they are not working.
If the answer is “yes, this person is trying to sell me something,” this does not automatically mean that he is a fraud, but be skeptical. Take a look at the evidence used to promote the product. Never trust a salesperson and remember the tactics discussed earlier: Transformation images are easy to fake, only “good” reviews are shown, and even science can be manipulated.
2. Ask if the salesperson cares about your long-term results.
Match your goals with the salesperson’s incentives. For example, gyms earn the most when you buy a long-term membership and then never return it (in fact, this is how most gym models work). Likewise, fitness products in late night commercials want you to buy their product, but they have absolutely no incentive to see you succeed in the long run.
If there is an incentive mismatch, do your homework. Make sure any review is from a third party website and not directly from the source. If the review sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
3. Make a list of reliable sources.
Once a source — an online resource, an “expert,” etc. — has demonstrated reliability over and over again, add it to your list of trusted sources. This method is not always bulletproof (on the other hand, you should avoid any methods called “bulletproof”), as you may misidentify the source or the source may earn a reputation just to “sell”. But in a world of endless information, you have to trust something . Constantly refine your list by adding those who have proven themselves and dropping those that are losing credibility.
The health and fitness industry will treat you like you’re first time at Cheers Bar – Dr. Oz recommends the best drinks, Food Babe warns you that special tastes are funny, Asprey tells you that you won’t absorb calories from beer if you eat wings at the same time, and everyone else wants to know your name. Take this at face value and you end up mysteriously losing your wallet. Worst of all, you’ll want to come back and hang out with your new “friends” anyway. (I mean, they were pretty damn nice to you!)
Instead, treat the industry as if you were walking alone at night in a dangerous area. Be careful to avoid fuzzy alleys and only walk in brightly lit areas.
Finally, I’ll leave you this: use your common sense. You may laugh, but in fitness it’s harder than it sounds; your brain will constantly try to convince you that there is “one magic pill.”
When this happens, catch yourself. You have more common sense than you think, because sometimes common sense is as simple as knowing someone’s weight loss advice is to eat more oil.