Shortcuts

"Try this new pill and you'll shed the weight almost instantly!"

This new challenge will make you drop 30lbs in 30 days!"

Sound familiar?

Fad diets, "heatlh gurus", and crazy program challenges are everywhere in the fitness world these days. While they differ in their approach, they all have on thing in common: they promise a shortcut to that healthy life you've always wanted. While this may sound tempting, these "shortcuts" are actually making your road to success much, much longer.

Take the fad diets and "30lbs in 30 days" challenges for example. These are both extreme methods of losing weight. While I don't doubt that you may lose a ton of weight in a short time with them, it's not sustainable. Can you eat under 800 calories/day the rest of your life, or exercise twice a day forever? It's just not realistic. The most likely outcome of one of these options is that you do really, really well for a month or two, don't feel great, stop doing it, and then end up losing all your progress and starting back at where you were prior or worse. Not only is it unrealistic for your schedule and mental wellbeing, but for your body as well. Our bodies need calories and rest, both of which are taken away in these examples. While the body may be able to withstand those deprivations for a short period of time, before too long you'll start to see negative effects.

Health "gurus" and social media "influencers" are often part of the problem as well. They show you these crazy exercises and promote these excessive diets/products/etc. and say you can be just like them if you follow what they do. Most often, that isn't the case. Problem number 1, this is their job. Big-name social media influencers have one responsibility: to look good and show themselves off. Their income depends on you listening to and believing them. Sometimes what they post just isn't realistic for the majority of the population, and other times they use photoshop, perfectly posed pictures, and other methods of showing a better picture of themselves than reality. Problem number 2, many of their ideas are far-fetched. They'll promote this specific gene in your body that allows you to unlock a new potential, a specific workout routine guaranteed to give you a 6-pack, or a diet that will shed pounds off your waist and keep your muscles huge at the same time. These theories often miss the mark on being realistic or applicable for most people.

Simply put, sometimes basic is best. The only way to truly guarantee success is to put in the work. Not only that, but you can't just put it in for a month and quit. Hard work, done the right (and safe) way, for a long period of time, is the only way to get to where you want to be. Be patient, trust the process, and you'll get results.