Beware of Misleading Health Products, Fitness Studios, Gyms and Personal Trainers

Nowadays many gyms, fitness studios, health products and personal trainers are misleading a lot of people and extracting a lot of money out of them. These health products, studios and trainers are coming up with new ideas and false claims. I want to bring to you, one such advertisement by a gym that I came across that has made an insensible, foolish, absurd and false claim.

I was reading the news paper and on the first page there is this ad of one of the gyms which claims a guaranteed weight loss of more than 2kilos in one week and a total of more than 8kilos in 1 month. 8 kilos in just one month? That is so great isn’t it? Any overweight/obese individual who reads that will surely want to lose that much weight in that amount of time. But hang on, is it possible to lose 8kilos in a month? Well, it is infact possible but for that you will have to starve. Now, is starving a “SAFE” way to lose weight? Certainly not.

Now let me tell you how these kinds of anti social elements are able to convince you and actually help you lose 8kilos in one month.

The word is “CRASH DIET”. They will put you on a crash diet. Crash diet is a diet which is extreme in its nutritional deprivations, typically severely restricting calorie intake. It is meant to achieve rapid weight loss and may differ from outright starvation only slightly. It is not meant to last for long periods of time, at most a few weeks. Importantly, the term specifically implies a lack of concern for proper nutrition. Now contrary to the belief of many people who start this diet, this form of dieting is neither healthy nor successful in achieving weight loss as it provokes a slowdown of the body's metabolic rate and after the initial period the body stores more energy in the form of fat. While some weight may be lost, this weight is usually gained back very quickly in the weeks that follow this diet.

They won’t tell you that their diet plan is a crash diet plan and since you are an individual who doesn’t know anything about fitness will probably go through these false routines thinking it is beneficial for you. As far as the exercises are concerned, when a person is on a crash diet they will either make you workout for a long time or they might just make you workout for just a while because the major part of this kind of weight loss is taken care by the crash diet.

So how much weight should an individual lose in one week? According to the exercise science a weight loss of 1 to 2 pounds i.e. around 0.5 to 1kg in a week is a safe weight to lose along with a proper nutritional diet and exercising. And remember one thing, no one can guarantee a specific amount of weight loss. It is a human body and not a machine that can be guaranteed.

I would like to advice all those who are looking for ways to lose weight. PLEASE do not fall into these kinds of traps. They are in the fitness industry to make money and not to benefit you. Consult fitness professionals, experts and your physician before starting weight loss program.


If you have any questions or want any guidance with regard to weight loss, please feel free to ask me.

Stay Healthy!