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FROM CONSUMPTION TO COMPETENCE
Ever the optimist, and knowing our human reluctance to get out of our own way, I considered it at least possible that—having recognised the wisdom and necessity of a program as established these past weeks—some of you keener types might have ventured into the marketplace to browse.
I would further hope, still optimistically, that coming from these parts, you’ve gathered more than a clue or two, and I haven’t inadvertently ushered you off to market in a trip destined to be of ‘the little piggy’ variety.
As so many encounters with fitness (and dietary) industries are wont to be.
Nonetheless, today I’ll belatedly arm you with a few caveats to keep you safe while wandering these badlands.
But even then, our theme for today, and Leftfield more generally, is one of self-reliance. Because just like Hill Street Blues’ ever-mindful Sergeant Esterhaus, while I have a deep and abiding concern for you, there is only so much I can do.
LET'S BE CAREFUL OUT THERE
Cops heading into the mean streets of 80s Detroit versus you perusing a fitness program?
Yes, hyperbolic. But wrangling in a reference to one of the greatest cop shows of all time aside, I want the point jarringly clear:
The fitness industry is not on your side.
Not to overlook the engineered convenience, hyper-palatable foodstuffs, and perpetual distraction, all but part of a confluence of factors contributing to our societal fitness decline. But even the most charitable interpretation would concede that the industries concerned are doing little to slow the slide, much less stop it
My point here is the outright deceit that is less an anomaly in these industries than the norm.
Not the odd bad apple. The odd good one.
And even that will sound overcooked when you’ve likely had, or have, encounters with trainers, other practitioners and retailers, all of whom seemed like nice people.
But while I can point to individuals—have done, and spoiler alert, will do below—I am pointing less at the people and more at the playbook. Because treating you like a sucker is so ingrained, so normal, so unremarkable that oftentimes, even those doing so won’t see it. It would never occur to them that they are doing anything but helping you.
When they are doing anything but helping you.
THE OBSTACLES ARE NOT THE WAY
We can refuse to understand the mechanics behind a theory and instead accept the word of an authority figure. If we fail to do the math on our own, we lose agency and the ability to develop an even more nuanced understanding of how the world works.
Seth Godin is not talking specifically about the miserable state of modern-day fitness here, but he could hardly better describe it.
Two barriers stand between you and a natural, relaxed relationship with food and movement; between you and a body that functions as it should:
The fitness industry
The diet industry
Were you shipped off to some desert island, even one with a McDonald’s, you would quickly figure all of it out. Your body is a self-governing organism, and it’s very good at getting what it needs, but only if you care to listen.
Unfortunately, we are products of a far different environment. Here, the signal—what you need and when— gets lost in all the noise. So much noise. When left to your own devices now, you are subject to twaddle like this:
For exercise, you "should just do what you love.”
The sort of thing you will hear across the board, even from your doctor, and absolutely the sage advice you can guarantee will be the first thing cited by a model when asked how we too might achieve such an envious figure. Along with the ever-present glass of water with lemon in the morning.
You should, of course, no more listen to a model’s advice on fitness than you should listen to what I have to say about runway walking, but this universal confusion leaves us ripe for the picking.
LEARNING TO FAIL
A situation enabled wholly through our collective ignorance, and the baffling failure of our education system to equip each of us with a basic understanding of human.
Had we been taught the fundamentals, none of this would be happening. Imagine if school had included:
basic human physiology
how stress works
how hunger works
how adaptation works
how sleep governs everything
why strength is non-negotiable
the difference between training and exercise
Just for starters. And you’d left school with the intellectual equivalent of your operating manual.
These industries—in their current form—couldn’t survive. Not because of regulation or integrity, or accountability, but because you simply wouldn’t fall for the nonsense. It would all sound absurd.
Now, if your hackles are raising at the very thought:
—I’ve got enough on my plate already without learning to be a personal trainer, let alone all that diet stuff, and that’s what I pay people for!
I would respectfully say: bullshit.
You are your responsibility. A personal trainer, a nutritionist, or any other outside help can be useful only as an adjunct to your understanding of you.
And you don’t know how you work. You are a mystery.
That’s the real issue. Not “lack of willpower,” not “no motivation,” not “I can’t stick with it.” You’ve never read the manual, so there’s a gap. And those selling you solutions rely on that gap.
That gap is the profit.
But hey, maybe the next thing will finally be it. Maybe this time you’ll end up fitter, better, transformed once and for all. But really, all fitness and dietary marketing is one version or another of the old 90s fitness infomercial promising abs in just 5 minutes a day.
And if you believe that,
I’VE GOT A BRIDGE TO SELL YOU
Modelled by those whose job was to look fantastic—none of whom got that way by using the equipment they were demonstrating. Never mind the years of training behind them; there was also the extreme, sustained dietary discipline no one mentioned, and the hundreds of small sacrifices that 99% of people will never make. In truth, most won’t do ten per cent of them. Which means their “five minutes a day” on a shiny, expensive contraption was getting them—at best—one per cent of the way to the promised abs.
And they couldn’t ship this stuff fast enough. Millions of units sold.
Precisely zero people getting anywhere close to the advertised result. Eventually, people caught on. So the industry did what the industry does: changed the equipment. Again. And again. And again. New shape, new angle, new ‘science’.
Same outcome.
And while the whole infomercial spectacle looks comically clumsy now—the fashion, the music, the PT Barnum hard sell—that’s only with the benefit of hard-won hindsight. The purchases that went from pride of place in the living room, to under the bed, to hard rubbish.
Now, if you’re thinking: I’m smarter than that. I never fell for that crap, fantastic.
But are you fit? Do you enjoy an easy, natural relationship with movement and food?
Because if not, you’ve fallen for it in some other form. Not that it’s your fault when all of it— from the imagery to the testimonials, the pseudo-science to the language—is designed to deceive.
If you think we’ve evolved past this, think again, because only the wrapper has changed. Now algorithmically tuned to your psyche, it’s more sophisticated, more personalised. More dangerous.
Instead of a plastic ab-cruncher gathering dust under the bed, you get blockbuster tie-ins. One fitness app in particular promises you can look like Thor in just 20–30 minutes a day. Which is bullshit, even before we consider the full-time trainer, chef, and other staff dedicated specifically to that purpose. And no mention of the obvious steroid use.
You’ll be able to wield the hammer of the gods if it’s of the polystyrene prop variety, but you’ll be about 40 kilos of pure muscle short of Thor.
But the deceit runs deeper than omission. The Hemsworth venture, like every celebrity fitness spin-off, sells the fantasy while quietly carving out not just the inconvenience or even the work. But the starvation, chemistry and cost.
The toll. The sheer impossibility of it — for any normal person—even more fanciful than those infomercials we now scoff at. That’s how distorted the frame still is: To manipulate you. To get you to buy. To keep you consuming. And even if we excuse all advertising as aspirational, even if we generously grant that they’re just selling “the ideal,” rarely is it an ideal worth chasing.
But most pointedly: what other industries promise so much and deliver so little?
Gambling. Timeshares. Multi-Level Marketing and other get-rich-quick schemes. Lotteries. Cults. This is the company we keep. All are, rightly, viewed with suspicion. And were we to engage with these industries, we’d be wise to keep our wits about us.
PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT
If you’re seeking salvation in the form of detox socks, a sweat-belt or anything else you believe absolves you from ever actually moving, much less moving strenuously, that’s simply Darwinism in action: a thinning of the herd.
But there is much more that slips under the radar, disguised as good sense.
As ever, we don’t know what we don’t know, and the problem is just how thin this disguise need be for us to be nodding sagely at one more seemingly well-reasoned inanity. Again, that’s not your fault— it’s designed to deceive. But waiting, or even expecting these industries to change, isn’t merely to abdicate responsibility and agency; it’s to work the wrong end of the problem entirely.
These industries thrive precisely because you have been conditioned not to trust yourself. Not to think. Not to experiment. Not to observe, or learn. Just to consume.
And when you abdicate that responsibility, even well-meaning people in these industries end up steering you further from the truth, because it’s not just the bad actors. It’s the entire playbook. As Godin suggests above, instead of outsourcing, we must learn to take care of these things ourselves.
By which I mean, we must learn to take care of ourselves.
So how do we dip a toe into this cesspool, get a program, and get out? You do exactly that. I’m happy to help either with a Leftfield option or with directions to another credible source—get a program and get out.
And then look to the only person you can trust for the answers: you.
And the way to do that is to look and listen to what your body and mind are telling you. And the best way to do that is to first ensure nothing else is confusing the issue.
There is nothing between you and a base, even elite, level of fitness. Nothing. Not the Fittech, a piece of equipment, activewear— not so much as a water bottle.
I am not saying you can’t have these things. Only that you don’t need them.
Get a program. Get fit. Then, if you must, buy something as a reward—and as proof you didn’t need it.
Do that just once, and everything changes— you’ve done it once, you can do it again.
And indeed you must. Each program teaching you something about your body and mind. In the early days, each program teaching you hundreds of things. Until, with time— as with any other skill— you’ll have the requisite self-knowledge that makes a base level of fitness, dietary health and lifestyle behaviours nothing other than a boringly normal fait accompli.
This Leftfield approach is less about the specifics of any single step and more about arming you with the underlying principles that then equip you to deal with anything that arises—the essence of self-reliance.
Not prepared, or preparing, for the next step, but for ALL steps.
Because your body is the best teacher you will ever have. And quite aside from the sense of self-worth and independence that come part and parcel to this approach, you immunise yourself to the hand-wringing anxiety, the pain-button pushing, and the ‘you are a problem that needs solving’ standard playbook offered up by those purporting to help you at present.
Not that it matters. Because then, very close to nothing in the fitness and dietary industries will speak to you. All those fitness, nutrition and lifestyle solutions will vanish because you see through them. It will all wash over you like white noise.
The snake oil of a less enlightened time.
The end of consumption marks the start of competence. And confidence.
Your cart is empty. As it should be.
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Enjoy your weekend.
- OLI