I’m going to get straight down to what’s wrong with this industry. If you don’t like it, that’s fine.
There are a lot of people out there — and they all want one thing: your money. And they give zero thought to whether what they’re selling you actually works.
Today I want to talk about one specific group: meal replacement shake sellers.
A Story That Sums It Up
A few years back, before I was a personal trainer, I was working in IT and ended up on-site at a chain of gyms. I was behind the reception desk fixing a computer when a young overweight lad — couldn’t have been more than 15 — came in with his mother. He was complaining that he’d only lost two pounds in the past week on their programme.
The receptionist started asking what he was eating. He listed out perfectly reasonable meals — steak, rice, broccoli. Then this woman — who had never met a salad she liked — told him to replace two meals a day with protein shakes and eat only chicken breast for dinner.
I sat there thinking: run, kid. But the poor lad’s mum paid an arm and a leg for two tubs of this powdered chemical nonsense.
Fast forward five years. I’m now a qualified personal trainer. I get a call from someone claiming to be a certified Herbalife distributor, telling me about all the money I could make selling their products. At the end of her pitch, I asked: “Can you tell me what’s in the shakes?”
Uncomfortable silence.
“It’s all on the website,” she said.
“So you don’t know what’s in the product you’re selling?”
That was the end of that.
The Pattern Never Changes
People will sell you rubbish and tell you it’s gold if they think you’ll believe it. They care more about filling their own pockets than about your actual health or your weight loss.
There’s a company selling diet coffee right now — “Skinny Coffee” or something similar — that has only 6 calories per cup. Impressive, except a normal cup of coffee also has 5 calories. They didn’t put much research into that one.
These companies pay social media figures to endorse their products. The person looks great in the photo — but they look great because they train with a qualified personal trainer several times a week. Not because of whatever they’re being paid to promote.
The Simple Truth About Fat Loss
Body fat is stored energy. One pound of body fat is roughly equivalent to 3,500 calories.
If you want to lose a pound of body fat a week, you need to be in a 3,500-calorie deficit for that week. That’s it. You don’t need shakes, powders, skinny teas, or DNA tests.
Eat normal food. Walk for about an hour a day to burn 500 extra calories. Do that for seven days. You’re a pound of body fat down. Repeat.
Anyone selling you something more complicated than that is either misinformed or making money off your confusion. Usually both.