Q: I’ve tried spinning, boot camp and Zumba, I’ve downloaded apps and subscribed to weight-loss programmes but nothing sticks. Is it normal to hop between hot trends without any real success?
A: You either need to vaccinate or build up herd immunity because you’re wired not to socially distance. The truth is that while everything you mentioned has settled into an endemic state, rest assured a new viral pandemic is loading and you’re likely to be infected.
You may be thinking: “Oh, Water Cooler, save us the glib analogy, we’ve had enough.” That’s fair enough but the mechanism behind fads and trends has finally been unmasked. The Wall Street Journal recently shouted in a subheading: “Just like viruses, health fads such as Peloton, Pilates and Zumba spread rapidly and then fade.”
The trigger to the article was Peloton’s seemingly inexplicable 95% stock crash. It has gone from the next-best thing to a business slashing 800 jobs and parting ways with a founder who Bloomberg reports has seen his net worth decrease from $1,9bn last January to $225m today.
The substantive point made by the author Josh Zumbrun, who cites various large-scale studies, one spanning three generations, is that fitness and health fads are like contagious viruses bouncing between households until there are no new susceptible homes to infect. Then they fade away. Researchers, he says, agree that health behaviours “spread through social networks”.
Do you remember classic viral pyramid marketing? Trusted friends and family would recruit one to sign up for some miracle product (or supplement brand), and then incentivise them to do the same within their networks. Terrifying how social media is built on the same principles.
Zumbrun references various studies that link both harmful behaviour and positive behaviours to how we are influenced by our social environment. Citing one of the studies he writes: “Dr Leahey of UConn has also used randomised trials to show the phenomenon genuinely reflected causation, not correlation, among acquaintances sharing certain behaviours.”
Surely not, right? It would appear that the most efficient way to generate new interest and sales is to create new variants of the same exercise or diets. Want to have fun? Ask Atkins, LCHF, Banting, Keto and Paleo adherents to face off against each other. Then offer them a potato.
The only way you’ll stop buying gadgets, downloading apps you’ll never use and redesigning your kitchen to impress your Instagram followers is by reading the Water Cooler, vaccinating or developing herd immunity.
To vaccinate you need to study. You must understand your body, its muscles and how they work together, its energy systems and when and how they come into play, how you metabolise the food you eat, the concept of calories and how it affects weight management, what hormones are and how your lifestyle — including sleep, food and alcohol, among much more — affects them and how this changes your body. Take the time to learn about different exercises and modalities.
Once you understand your body and exercise fundamentals you’ll know that jumping on a mini trampoline doesn’t have magic toning powers and that boot camp isn’t a military secret leaked to free suburban housewives of love handles, but rather a series of callisthenics exercises done in a group. Your non-boot camp friends doing high-intensity interval training or its sexier cousin, metabolic conditioning, are probably doing the same thing as you, packaged as “the newest way to get in shape”.
You’ll realise that if you train outdoors it doesn’t mean you’re doing “boot camp” just like doing box jumps doesn’t mean you’re doing Crossfit. Your body doesn’t care which “unique selling point” infects your circle of friends. Knowledge isn’t only power, it’s freedom. You’ll know how to eat and train and which apps you need and which you don’t.
If you don’t have the time or interest to vaccinate yourself with knowledge — that’s fine, not everyone is interested in this stuff — then build herd immunity. You build herd immunity (from your online and in-person social networks) by investing in a qualified trainer who will shut out the noise, design an exercise and diet programme that’s right for you, and hold you accountable.
Most importantly, do something you enjoy. If you have fun and enjoy the company of other people doing the same thing you’re likely to stick around long enough to see results.
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