By Nick Nilsson
Author of 30-Second Ab-Solution
Rant #1 - Why Does Everything Makes Us Fat Or Causes Cancer?
It seems like we can't eat or drink anything these days without being told it'll make us fat or cause cancer.
We try to eat canned tuna to eat less fat and we get mercury poisoning. We eat fruit and vegetables for the vitamins and fiber and the pesticides give us tumors. We eat chicken and we get mad chicken disease and now farm-raised salmon will give you swine flu. Wine is either good or bad for you depending on whether you eat it with cheese or with crackers!
What ever happened to the good old days when we got fat from eating too much pie and we got sick from eating too much paint off the walls? Now I hear you can get cancer from worrying about getting cancer.
Rant #2 - Low-Carb Beer
Do beer companies seriously believe that they can get people to believe that they're selling diet beer? With all their talk about who has 1 gram less carbs in a tablespoon than the other, they seem to forget that it's actually the ALCOHOL in their product that makes you fat!
Not only does alcohol basically snuff out your fat-burning enzymes, it's also preferentially stored as fat and seriously messes up your body's production of muscle-building hormones such as testosterone.
I guess saying "low-carb" does sound better than saying "watered-down." Next they'll be adding caffeine and Gatorade to it and be calling it "high-performance beer."
Rant #3 - "Nutrient of the Week" Bandwagon Marketing
Did you hear? Froot Loops are now healthy because they contain added calcium! They contain added calcium because someone decided to add a big bag of chalk to the sugary goop they make it out of. You can now feed it to your sugar-crazed A.D.D. kids with a clear conscience because it's now healthy for them because it has CALCIUM.
I'm waiting for the day when a clever marketer takes a piece of plain blackboard chalk and sells it as a "Calcium Stir Stick" for your coffee.
I also just love it when a product that's been around for 30 years suddenly proclaims it's now "fat free" or "low-carb" even though it's always been and everybody knows it. "Fat Free" or "Low-Carb" water is not the revolutionary product it's made out to be.
But what really takes the cake are vitamin companies that proudly jump on the nutrient bandwagon crying "See! We've had it all along!" when their pills are so tightly compressed and unabsorbable you can still read the brand stamp on them when they come out the other end.
Rant #4 - Making Low-Carb Foods Out Of Foods That Shouldn't Be Low-Carb
Orange juice just shouldn't be low-carb. I don't care what they say. If I want low-carb orange juice I'll add my own water instead of paying the juice company to add it for me and charge me extra for the privilege. That's all I have to say about that.
Rant #5 - Trying to Pass Unhealthy Foods Off As Healthy
Pork Rinds Lite - now with 25% less fat, sodium, cholesterol, lead and cyanide.
Even if you take some token percentage of the bad stuff out of a bad food, it's still going to be a bad food. It's like buying reduced fat lard - it's still lard. It just has a nicer name now. Anyway, it's so easy to reduce the fat in a serving by making the serving smaller, what's the point? Who's going to sit down and eat just 3 cheese doodles?
When I eat a food I know is bad, I know it's bad but sometimes I'm just going to eat it anyway. I'm not an idiot. I'm not going to sue you for making unhealthy food. Nobody is putting a gun to my head to eat it. I don't believe for a second that slightly reducing the "perceived naughtiness" of a food somehow now makes it "healthy." So please don't try and sugarcoat this delicious garbage unless it's for flavor.
Rant #6 - The Amazing Diet Patch
The only way you'll lose weight with the Diet Patch is if you put it over your mouth. 'Nuff said.
Rant #7 - Expensive Urine and Other Supplement Bashing
There are doctors even to this day who believe that taking vitamins will only result in expensive urine. They believe that you can get all the vitamins and minerals you need in a balanced diet. Unfortunately, the only balanced diet some people get is when they're trying to carry 3 dishes to the table in one hand.
Jumping straight to prescribing costly drugs to mask symptoms to people who are probably just desperately in need of basic nutrition is the epitome of expensive urine, in my opinion.
And then there's creatine. You may remember the buzz a few years ago when some of the "don't-confuse-us-with-the-facts" media jumped on a story about the deaths of some high school wrestlers. They were taking creatine to improve their performance so obviously it must have killed them.
It certainly wasn't because they were taking long steam baths in rubber suits and exercising intensely without drinking adequate water in order to desperately make weight for a wrestling meet. It must have been the horrible supplement that did it because nobody has ever died from catastrophic dehydration or heat stroke, right?
Let me clarify - there is nothing dangerous about creatine. It's a natural substance already found in your body in quantity. It's found in every piece of meat that you eat. The only way creatine could hurt you is if someone drops a bucket of it on your foot.
Supplements only seem to make the news when somebody has something bad to say about them, regardless of whether it's true or not.
Rant #8 - "Eat Whatever You Want And Still Lose Weight" Fat Loss Pills and Carb Blockers
What a wonderful message to send to the millions of people out there trying to lose weight. You don't need to watch what you eat or exercise...just take this little pill and you can eat frosted Twinkies stuffed with hot dogs and not gain a pound.
Never mind what all this terrible stuff is doing to your insides, there's also the vicious cycle of loss and regain that diet pill manufacturers build their entire businesses on: you eat like crap so you get fat then you take a pill so you can keep eating like crap while losing weight.
When you don't take the pill and continue to eat like crap, you get fat and depressed and need to take the pills again. What better way to sell something than to create a physical and emotional dependence on it!
Now I'm not saying the general population shouldn't know better than to fall for this but there is a reason that toothpicks and shampoo come with instructions on the back and why hair dryers come with a warning not to operate while standing in a pool of water.
Here's a thought, and pardon me if I'm out of line, if you can't eat it unless you take a pill to stop it from being digested by your body, perhaps maybe, just maybe, you shouldn't be eating it in the first place...
Rant #9 - "Certified" Personal Trainers Who Have No Business Training People
When I say this, I want you to know I've got nothing against certified personal trainers - I am one! I just don't like watching a "certified trainer" make a trusting beginner do Behind-The-Neck Close Grip Lunging One-Arm Upright Bent-Over Swinging Barbell Presses while he or she stands there and counts the number of times the weight moves up and down.
It takes a little more than a two-hour seminar and a polo shirt with the name of the gym printed on the front to make a person a qualified personal trainer.
Rant #10 - Fitness Instructors Who Eat Donuts In Front of Clients
Just because you're 20 years old and could metabolize vulcanized rubber doesn't mean you should eat a bag of chips or donuts in front of people who are desperately trying to lose weight by taking a class that you are teaching and who are looking to you as a role model! If you want to eat junk, fine, just do it on your own time.
When your habits catch up with you in a few years (and they will), there will always be fat loss pills and carb blockers to fall back on...
Rant #11 - Weight-Loss-Due-To-Illness Envy
Have you ever been really, really sick, dropped 10 or 20 pounds in a week, then had some knucklehead come up to you afterward and say "I wish I could get sick like you so I could lose weight."
Start with the fat in your head! How come these people never get their wish?
Rant #12 - Sad But True - Sh** Yourself Thin
Another brilliant way to lose weight. Take laxatives with every meal so that you don't keep ANYTHING in you for longer than a few minutes. Just go eat 3-day-old fast food cheeseburgers every meal - you'll get the same general effect.
Rant #13 - Losing Weight By Wearing Lighter and Lighter Clothing Every Time You Weigh Yourself
This is just kind of funny but I've seen it happen. Start by wearing heavy winter clothing and weigh yourself. Next week, take off the jacket - you've lost 5 pounds! Congratulations! Go with the snow pants next week. Another 3 pounds. The sweater goes next - 2 more pounds. When you get down to pajama bottoms and a tank top, be careful...you may have to start exercising.
Rant #14 - Food That's Only 10% Real
How can a juice call itself a juice if it's only got 10% real juice? Can I pay for the juice with 10% real money? How come they don't advertise it as 90% fake? Some say it's half empty, some say it's half full. I say it's only 10% real. Who's to say who's right?
Rant #15 - The Diet Patch Again Because It's Just So Stupid
I just saw another ad for this thing the other day. "Burn 500 calories an hour!" If you think your metabolism is going to go that fast from a simple, useless patch, get yourself to the emergency room. Sign a blank check and hand it to them. Tell them to do whatever they want to you because you'll believe whatever they tell you.
Rant #16 - Cereal Bars "With All The Nutrition of a Bowl of Cereal"
And all the high fructose corn syrup of a can of Coke. And all the fiber of a piece of gum. And all the preservatives of a jar of jelly. If they want to impress me, they should base these cereal bars on cereals that are actually GOOD for you to start with!
Rant #17 - Women Appearing in "Shape" Magazine Who Have Never Touched a Weight in Their Life
I guess when they say "shape" they really don't specify exactly what "shape" that may be. Marshmallows have shape. Twinkies have shape. There may be women out there who aspire to the ideal of not having any muscle tone, but they probably aren't buying this magazine - they're using it to prop up the short leg of their couch.
Call me crazy but I think a magazine that is about health and fitness should have pictures of people who are actually healthy and fit.
Ran #18 - Low Carb Hershey Bars
The day I saw one of these on the candy rack was the day I knew the low-carb craze had truly gone too far. Eating low-carb is not about carefully plotting out how crappy you can eat while still keeping your carb count low, as many food manufacturers seem to think.
Eating low-carb is about improving your health and lowering your bodyfat by eating naturally low-carb foods, not about how many grams of the sugar alcohol "gottapoopitol" you can cram into some nasty, chewy, foul-tasting imitation chocolate bar.
Rant #19 - Supplement Companies That Disguise Their Bottles As Prescription Medication
While some companies rely on fancy pictures and hype to sell their products, other companies make the packaging generic and resembling a powerful prescription medication. Guess what? The stuff still doesn't work. It just looks like it does.
When is a fat loss pill worth $150 a bottle? When the bottle is stuffed with 5 twenties and a fifty.
Rant #20 - People Who Jump On A Diet Bandwagon Then Bash Others For Not Eating Like They Do
Just because you are eating low-carb doesn't mean that everybody else in the world is an idiot when they bite into an apple. Eating low-carb certainly works. So does eating low fat. Heck, you could lose weight on an all-chocolate diet because you'll get so sick of it you won't want to eat it any more.
Eat what you want to eat but don't hack on others for stuff you were doing just last week. Are we going to have to start dividing up restaurants into "Carb" and "Non-Carb" sections like with smoking?
If you feel you need to eat entire packages of Jimmy Dean sausage for breakfast, lunch and dinner because "you can," then just keep it to yourself. Trust me on this...nobody who is watching you stuff your face with buttered bacon wants to hear about how the apple they just ate is going to make them fat and kill them.
More From Fitstep.com
| The 7 Biggest Training Mistakes I've Ever Made | |
| Unleash Your Metabolism With Fat-Loss Circuit Training | |
| 7 Simple Rules for What You Should Eat | |
| How to Gain an INCH on Your Arms in 6 Minutes |
Share This Page...
---
Home -> Fitness For Beginners -> Humor -> Rants
