Save Cash: On Fitness Infomercial Junk
December 26, 2011, By Jack Heffron 0 comments
What is it about informercials that makes us fork over good money on promises that we know, in some primordial sliver of our brains, aren't real? Part of it, I think, is the sheer repetition. If you're a night owl or an early bird, you can't escape seeing infomercials over and over, even if you surf quickly past them. After a while, they start to seem legit.
Many focus on fitness, expounding the glories of this diet or that exercise machine or buffing-up program. They show you a faded polaroid of what appears to be a walrus wrapped in a floral tent and then switch to a tanned and sculpted beauty worthy of walking the runway for Victoria's Secret. Same gal. With the glassy-eyed zealotry of a recent convert, she urges you to buy whatever revolutionary fitness wonder engineered her transformation. "It's so easy!" she squeals.
Then there's a pic of Tommy Tub-o-Goo draped in a t-shirt the size of a parachute, an existential frown drooping across his mug. He is quickly replaced by a muscled, Speedo-ed version of the same dude, who now sports six-pack abs, broad shoulders, a blinding grin and maybe even more hair on his head. Smiling Tommy assures us that his stunning metamorphosis took but minutes per day to achieve.
So we all think—if these morons can do it, I can too!
But before making that decision, I contacted Ed Scow, Man of the House's resident personal trainer and the man behind thefitdadsays.com. Through his blog and his articles on our site, I've learned that Ed is a well-informed, common-sense guy who pulls no punches even while making me laugh. I asked him about investing in one of these heavily marketed miracle fitness cures.
I started with the diets. Do they work?
"No," Ed tells me. "Most of those diets are complete and total trash. Actually most of what’s sold on television, at least in my viewing, aren’t diets, but rather supplements and other 'potions' that make you believe you don’t have to do anything to see results."
Exactly. Which is what I like about them.
"I know that people are smarter than that, but the marketers are very smart and prey upon people’s hot buttons," Ed says. "They know just the right areas to hit that get you to think 'maybe this will work,' when in reality all it will do, at best, is make you pee a lot in that first week, or just make you burn a few extra bucks."
