12 years today ago today I turned up at the YMCA in Cambridge to do my very first fitness course – the Level 2 Fitness Instructor.
Out of the last 4,383 (don’t worry – I included leap years) there haven’t been many where somebody hasn’t, to some degree, disagreed with what I / we are saying.
It’s mostly conversational and inquisitive – you know “I thought we were supposed to eat less fat”, “I heard low intensity cardio was best for fat loss” and so on.
You do get the occasionally objectionable person who seems to feel the need to argue with everything we say.
Facebook is particularly bad for this.
Many of them state what they believe as though it’s gospel.
Our general reply when they say something is “…. is your opinion”.
Ie: They say “Working at a steady state at 65-75% of your maximum heart rate puts you in the fat burning zone”.
We say: “….. Is your opinion”.
Unlike most, we’re not arrogant enough to think that what we believe is indisputable fact.
We know that for every experiment we can ‘cherry pick’ to show that interval training, a balanced diet, reducing toxicity and so on are good, there are as many experiments that seem to show the opposite.
We’re aware that when we recommend something to someone and they achieve amazing results, we can’t cateogrically say that was the exact reason as plenty of other things will have changed – it’s not a ‘fair test’, adjusting one variable at a time.
We know that there is no cast iron, indisputable, unarguable proof for pretty much everything we say – just as there isn’t for the other schools of thought.
We understand why people get confused – pretty much every day there seems to be something in the media about health and weight loss that contradicts the previous day.
Who do you listen to?
The following is how we decide what to believe and who to listen to – you may chose to do the same.
If you like:
1. How does the person that is giving you this information stand to gain from you using it?
Is it by you repeatedly buying their food substitute product for the rest of you life or is it by you achieving amazing transformations and recommending them to your friends?
Does whoever has funded the ‘study’ gain by selling you what the study shows is good, or by contributing to increased public health?
2. Do they have a track record?
Is the person telling you that XYZ method works well able to show lots of people who they have helped achieve LASTING changes.
Or do they work in an office, go to the gym and read Men’s Health occasionally.
3. Does that person fully understand what they’re are talking about and the other schools of thought?
We’ve mentioned Charles Poliquin and Dax Moy in our blogs before.
Two of the world’s top personal trainers / coaches.
We’ve met both in person and both blew us away with the depth of their knowledge.
Both fully understand how the human body works and how it is affected by foods, stresses, toxicity and so on better than ANYONE we have ever met and better than we realistically ever will.
Better than any personal trainer, gym instructor, doctor, nutritionist, slimming club leader or ‘Joe Know-It-All’ we’ve ever met.
When you find people that know their stuff that well, who are we to argue with them?
If you haven’t listened to our podcast with Dax yet, then you’re missing out.
BIG TIME.
You can check all the podcasts out at myrise.co.uk/podcast and listen to them at your leisure.
So – remember, pretty much everything your hear IS opinion.
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This is how we chose who’s opinion to listen to.
Feel free to do the same.
Much love,
Jon ‘Opinions are like farts’ Hall and Matt ‘Everyone hears them but they don’t amount to crap’ Nicholson
