Farid Alsabeh: Resisting the fads

The Internet has become littered with marketing gimmicks. It’s bad enough that sidebar banners clutter the periphery of websites; just when you’ve trained yourself to ignore them, native advertising ensures that you’ll find a few promotions embedded in your news article as well that often match the format of other articles. But there’s a certain type of junk that’s more common than the rest — diet and weight-loss ads.

These ads pervade magazine shelves and commercials, too, and there’s no surprise why: it’s an extremely rewarding market. About one in seven Americans have used a non-prescription weight-loss supplement at some point in their lives. This statistic is less surprising when you consider that 38 percent of individuals who make New Years resolutions make losing weight their first priority.

Besides that, anyone who has had as much as a passing thought about fitness has probably wondered what simple trick could be “making nutritionists furious.” And for people who are serious about getting fit (through whatever means), this passing curiosity can quickly become an intense obsession.

My fixation on being fit came to me during my senior year of high school. Having been out of shape for a majority of my life, I decided to finally make whatever changes were necessary. With college just around the corner, I was determined to reach my goals as quickly and efficiently as possible.

I can’t count how many nights I spent browsing not-so-reputable sources online trying to turn my fitness dreams into reality. Worse yet, I would usually pick up a diet or exercise routine for a few weeks, only to replace it with another one I thought to be more convincing. I spent Halloween on the Atkins diet; by Thanksgiving, I was no-carb. I alternated between lifting and jogging as my ideas about which one would allow me to get fit more quickly shifted.

All this was motivated by my self-imposed time constraint. I wanted to look as good as possible going into college. And eventually, stumbling through a host of diet and exercise regimens actually paid off. But at what cost?

I had paid hundreds of dollars for supplements I thought would hasten my progress. Countless hours were wasted “researching” (read: obsessing) over what routine was best. Worst of all, I didn’t really learn anything. Which type of diet was most effective? What exercise is most important for losing weight? The answers to these questions were lost in my mess of a year.

Looking back, it seems the efficacy of those fads stemmed from the fact that they’re advertised to be uniquely fast. Rarely do you see a diet ad that doesn’t promise results in a matter of weeks. As consumers, we’re naturally inclined to desire the product immediately. So how can we make ourselves immune to this damning temptation?

I think we need to change how we view diets and nutrition at a fundamental level. There’s a misleading conception that the answer to “how do I lose weight” is something to be discovered, on the Internet or otherwise. But the third word of that question is I, and your experiences might differ dramatically from someone else’s.

In truth, the “secret to losing weight” is a knowledge that comes from self-experimentation. We are nothing more than complicated, walking biochemical processes. Try changing one variable at a time and see how your body responds. Does eating carbs before hitting the gym help you lift more? Try it for a few weeks and find out. Would 30 minutes of walking be sufficient to burn off that dessert you ate? Do it and see whether the effect on your weight appears or not, keeping everything else constant. When it comes to our own bodies, these personal experiments (when done correctly) can be more valuable than even scientific literature on the subject.

If I had been so structured with my progress, I may have delayed my goals by about a year. But the knowledge I’d gain would have been well worth the wait. Next time you come across a fitness ad, see if its appeal comes from your own eagerness or impatience. Then exit out and know that the alternate course will be far more rewarding.

Farid Alsabeh can be reached at falsabeh@umich.edu.

Farid Alsabeh: Resisting the fads