This Is Where I Draw The Line
What I Saw On Facebook Tonight Was Disgusting
It’s 10:15pm. I’m the only car remaining in the empty gym parking. Except for the cleaning guys. They’re there too.
Because I’m a human being, a creature of habit, and a darn millenial, I whip out my phone and check social.
Facebook is first.
Scroll.
Trump news.
Scroll.
Kaepernick news.
Scroll.
Pictures of my family at the beach.
Scr-wait why am I not at the beach?
One last scroll I said…
One last scroll was one too many.
What I saw was a classic example of dim-witted Facebook page looking for a quick viral post. It was like a cash grab for likes and shares. It had to be. What else could it have been?
Would you like to see what I saw? Brace yourself. Here we go…
What we have here is a classic example of clickbait.
The post insinuates that your belly will transform from the flabby, rounded ones on the left to the flat, sexy ones on the right. All you have to do is the moves listed below and follow what the thin, attractive women in the video are doing and you should be good to go.
Oh that didn’t work? Well how about these?
Seriously?
This shit infuriates me to no end. What this page is doing is perpetuating the myth of spot reduction. The idea that if you do 1000 crunches or a 500 tricep extensions, your abs and arms will transform in the blink of an eye.
It appeals to basic human emotion by dangling the tantalizing idea of swapping the flabby gut you hate with a flat, toned hourglass figure. It even circles the spots you’ll transform with these magical exercises no one has ever thought of before until now just so you know where to feel it.
It’s fishing for your attention, likes, and shares through cheap graphics and misleading workout titles like “flat abs workout” and “lower belly workout”.
It satisfies the desire for quick fixes that always go south even quicker.
People who are tired of nothing working and being scammed out of their time and money find these posts and think that maybe this will be the spark that ignites their fitness journey to a better life. They’re determined and they’ve got grit and a can-do attitude. They do these workouts, do lots of cardio (another staple piece of fat loss misinformation), and make sure they don’t eat anything that could be considered remotely bad. And when they fail, because their workouts were bogus and their cardio was doing more harm than good and they were actually eating more calories than they were before, back they fall into the bottomless pit of despair and hopelessness further perpetuated by your sleazy con you call a “flat abs workout”.
Scum.
Here’s The God’s Honest Truth…
Ab exercises DON’T shrink your stomach. Arm exercises DON’T shrink your arms. You CANNOT spot reduce fat. Otherwise, your legs would be the size of toothpicks from all the cardio you do.
Oh and for the record, no, you can’t turn that muscle into fat. You know why? BECAUSE THEY AREN’T EVEN THE SAME TISSUE! Seriously guys? Seriously? That’s like planting an apple seed and hoping for Hershey Bars.
It ain’t gonna happen.
You want to know the secret to a flat stomach? Here it is TOTALLY FREE. I don’t want you to like page or go to my website. There’s no product to buy before you get my awesome fat loss pdf. Nope, don’t need your email either.
You ready for this? It’s incredible. You’ll be slapping yourslf silly wondering how you didn’t think of it already.
Okay you ready? Here’s the secret sauce to fat loss:
Calorie deficit over a long period of time + moderate-high intensity resistance training with proper progressions over a long period of time + patience. LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS of patience and consistency.
It doesn’t sound as nice as “TOP TEN SUPER EFFECTIVE EXERCISES TO REDUCE HORRIBLE ARM FAT” nor did I keep the caps lock on when I typed it.
But I promise you everything that it’s all you need.
No marathon cardio sessions. No shakes. No 13 minute ab routine. No crunches. No yoga. No unrealistic expectations of overnight transformations.
Just good ol’ fashion energy balance and resistance training to build/preserve muscle. Done honestly and consistently and it works. Every time.
Why These Pages and Posts Are So Damaging and Why I’m Pissed About It
In a world of social media, we’re constantly being bombarded with images of fit guys and gals pushing fit teas, overpriced leggings, and 6 week workout programs.
Their bodies are immaculate. No one is arguing that. Most of us would shackle up with these people for a night or two if given the chance.
The funny thing is though if you were to go off the record with these folks and ask them how they built their bodies, you’d never hear a single sylabble about the magic 12 week program that turned it all around for them or the flat tummy tea that took them from beer belly to washboard abs.
Their stories start years ago and are filled with long, boring stretches of time where things just flatlined. They plateaued. It wasn’t exciting or awesome. Times where they felt like crap or their lifts stalled and muscle growth was hard to come by. Of course they’d break through and move the needle a little bit, but then it’s back to the grind of breaking down the next wall.
What I’m trying to say here is:
Content like the stuff shown above is hurting peoples perception of what it takes to reach their goals and adds to the confusion and frustration that comes with simply starting a workout program much less being consistent with one long enough to see meaningful change.
I didn’t see a single sentence on that entire page that addressed calorie deficits and how to use them. I saw nothing about resistance training programming or proper form. I saw nothing about protein and it’s role in muscle protein synthesis and why that’s critical to changing your body composition.
All I saw was propaganda drummed up to get some more hits and a high post reach. Great for the page numbers, but harmful for the consumer.
We don’t need any more quick fixes. We don’t need more misinformation flooding the minds of impressionable people who don’t know any better. If you don’t actually understand exercise science, human anatomy, and nutrition then do us all a favor and close your mouth.
I don’t sit here on a high horse because I have a paper certification that says I’m a personal trainer or because I’m in school for physical therapy and I think I have it all figured out. It’s irrelevant because there are people who have won competitions and achieved incredible fitness feats both personal and professional who have never even cracked open an A&P textbook.
The same people you call “meatheads” would school a lot of exercise science majors when it comes to this fitness thing. The difference is they’ve not only studied what works, they’ve done it.
So it’s not about needing a degree or a certification. It’s not about needing to lift a certain amount of weight or maintain a specific bodyfat percentage.
It’s about being responsible about the information we share with the world.
Stop spreading lies. You’re hurting people.
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About The Author: I’m Zach Newman. Conversation is insanely important to me. Its why I love creating things because creation sparks discussion and discussion is the best way to learn from each other and create community. So please, hop in the comments and respond to the article, ask a question, or simply tell me what you had for lunch today — seriously, I’m curious. What DID you have for lunch today?
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