The Important Lessons I've Learned as a Reformed Fitness Infomercial Junkie

Recently while training a client in her living room, I caught the majority of an infomercial for a popular workout method. I won't name-names, but suffice it to say that the fitness personality behind the product is well-known in the industry and has her name behind many other workout programs and products.

While watching this infomercial, I had a couple of thoughts: 1) The people who produce these infomercials have the delivery down to a science; and 2) Wow, I totally used to fall for this, hook, line, and sinker! It's true, I'll admit it: at one point in my life, I was a fitness-infomercial product junkie. I fell for all the hype, believed all the wild claims, and bought into the amazing transformation stories. I remember the emotional highs I would experience when I watched these infomercials and saw what I thought were the faces of people who were fundamentally transformed by their experience with this or that program: to be blunt, I was gullible and every marketer's dream. 

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Not long ago, I was in Maine visiting my parents and going through old boxes of my stuff. I came across my collection of informercial purchases, including:

1) Billy Blanks' Tae Bo-->

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2) Mari Windsor's Pilates-->

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3) Greer Childers' Body Flex-->

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I remember distinctly being totally loca for these programs: I'd watch the infomercial over and over again. I don't know how I convinced my parents to allow me to order all these videos, but in their defense, I'm sure it pleased them that I was more interested in working out in our basement than engaging in other, less savory activities! 

In retrospect, the anticipation of waiting for the videos to arrive and unwrapping them was more exciting than actually working out to them, ha! This was especially true of the Body Flex videos which promised a leaner, healthier physique by performing various breathing techniques. I'll never forget one called Lion's Breath: the sound that she instructed us to make was a cross between a wheezing bulldog and a cat in the midst of coughing up a hair ball. This was supposed to make me lose weight!!! I can't help but laugh now! 

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I remember being really jazzed about the workouts for several weeks or months, and then my interest would eventually wane. After all, who could stay motivated by a video that promised great results by making sounds like a dying animal?!? Now, it's much easier to say that it's no wonder my efforts failed since they were built on the unrealistic premise that my results would we swift and informativeness. However, back in the day, I was quick to blame my lack of results on myself: my lack of discipline meant that I was an intrinsic failure. As a result, I continued to look at and be seduced by infomercials, perpetually in search of the one that would "work" for me. This was a self-fulfilling cycle which only served to keep me dependent on the external as the means of achieving my goals, and if you been reading the blog for awhile, you know how that turns out. 

As a reformed fitness infomercial junkie, I have a lot I could be embarrassed about. I visibly cringed, in fact, when I rediscovered these gems in my parents' basement. However, ordering those videos, anticipating their arrival, and yes, even the let down when these "miracles" failed to deliver the results I was after, helped me learn a powerful lesson: not only do infomercials lie in order appeal to the people's emotions, but there really is no substitute for putting in the hard work, day in and day out, even when you feel like you'd rather do ANYTHING else. 

Infomercials are universally effective because they all follow a specific structure and abide by a formula designed to convert into sales. It's all about the bottom line, and therefore requires quite a bit of "fluffing up" the facts and results. In other words, what you see is not what you get! However, this doesn't much matter in a numbers game like infomercials because what they are selling is not a product; rather, it's hope. Infomercials are adept at capturing the hopes, wishes and desires of a particular audience and appealing to our deepest insecurities. It's hard to admit this, but when I was buying up all these products, it's because my opinion of myself and my confidence in my abilities was so limited that I was grasping for something--anything!--that promised me a way out of feeling as badly about myself as I did then. 

Buying these products provided that temporary relief, but they did not provide a sustainable solution. What is clear to me now that I've got some perspective and achieved some distance from the situation is that the problem is the act of tethering ourselves to a particular outcome. We do this when we buy into the promise made by an infomercial, and when we inevitably fall short of this expected outcome because the barrier to success is impossibly high, we take it out on ourselves. We blame our lack of adherence on our weakness, our bad luck, and our lack of willpower. This mentality only serves to further undermine our ability to take positive steps to improve our lives and our health. It's self-defeating, and keeps us in a perpetual state of looking outside of ourselves for something to satisfy that desire for transformation.

And here's where I think the infomercial mavens are doing the biggest disservice to consumers, and why it's so important for us to fight back against the message they're selling: not only does relying on external circumstances to determine our success backfire 100% of the time, we don't really (deep, deep, deep down) want an easy way out. We are smart: we know that there is no easy fix, no failure-proof, singular method to achieve lasting health and vitality. I believe that when we connect to the deepest part of ourselves--our true selves--we find that we are not afraid of hard work, in investing in ourselves and in our hard-earned positive outcomes. We are not automatons, and that's what infomercials try to tell us: "This product will work for you because you are like everyone else and we are all the same!" BUT NO, we're not; we're all unique, flawed, beautiful, nuanced, deep, fascinating people who have stories to tell, scars to bear, and paths to go down. Instead of more infomercials, setting more and more unrealistic expectations, we need more vehicles of empowerment and support. We need communities that promote holistic health solutions, and that encourage people to connect, share and develop a love of fitness together. 

This is the point of origin of true transformation.