The weight loss spam I get is kinda hilarious

Over on my Lose Weight No Bullshit site, I mean. That site has become really popular, and it gets smashed pretty hard with lots of traffic every day. In case you just haven't been paying attention, I have a whole free weight loss system over there, as well as a blog where I have achieved some level of internet fame by calling out weight loss scam artists, spam pedlars and assorted scumbags.

The spam I get on my main business site as a Brunswick Personal Trainer is a little different but I'll tell you about it as well. You see, when a website is successful, it becomes easier for people to find on google. And the easier it is to find, the more successful it becomes. So since my site is quite successful and easy to find, what sort of spam do you think I get a lot of? No, you guessed wrong. I get "your site isn't very easy to find, but I can help you with a better google rank" spam from SEO (search engine optimisation) people. Constantly. Even though my contact page specifically states that I don't want to be contacted about that.

You gotta wonder if my site is so hard to find, how do they find it in order to spam me? Anyway stay with me I am going somewhere with this.

Back to Lose Weight No Bullshit though, and I have comments open on that site, but I have to approve them before they show up, right? So I'll get an email, go check it out and it'll be a comment that's like "good information, thanks for posting" and they sneak a link in there to some spam site. If it's a legit site run by another trainer or something that's all good but if it's a spam site or a scam or pushing unhealthy weightloss products then obviously I'm not going to approve the comment. I swear to god I actually got one with a link to Fat Loss Factor hidden in there. Newsflash idiots, I'm the guy who figured out that you were behind the weightloss spam floods on tumblr and pinterest, in particular the stuff targeting kids with eating disorders... you think I'm not going to detect your spam in my comments? On the very same blog where I've called you out like 1/2 a dozen times?

Rocket scientists I swear to god.

The fat loss factor one was super ironic but that's just one example. Mostly you get comments with a link to some other "health and fitness" or "weight loss" type of website. And when you click around a bit, you quickly notice that the information on there is TERRIBLE. Mostly it's just rehashing all the most common urban myths about "eating 6 small meals a day instead of 3 large ones" or whatever else, and often in terrible English as well. The one I got today was all about "loose weight with low crab diets". I swear to god, low crab diets.

So what's going on is that the SEO people (maybe not the very same ones, but you get my point) who spam me via email saying they can improve my google rank are building these sites... and then I guess if I slip 'em a few bucks they put a link from their site to mine, google crawls through it, and it boosts my rank and I go up a position in the search results, or something. The issue is though... it's just more bad information being put out on the internet that is going to add to people's confusion. I think I've successfully proven already that most of the "commonly accepted facts" about weight loss are a load of crap, and people need to realise that they're a load of crap and do what actually works instead. But when people search for information and find more and more articles pushing the same inaccurate nonsense, it becomes harder and harder to de-program them from going along with these false ideas.

So... the point I'm trying to make is to be careful with what you read, and don't believe everything that's on the internet. Increasingly so these days, the vast majority of it seems to be written be SEO people with no qualification or knowledge of the subject matter.

I'll tell you what else... legit people in the health, fitness and weight loss business should NOT be paying these scammers to fill the internet with more rubbish.

That's what I think.

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Oh you still wanna talk about testimonials?

No one gets Personal Training Testimonials like this one.

No one ELSE anyway.

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3 PBs in 3 days!

Well, I've had a pretty good week so far!

Here's a video from today, setting a new personal best on One Arm Dumbbell Rows. 65kg, for 4 (and a half!) reps. You can see it's too heavy for me to control very much on the eccentric part of the exercise, but I'm was pretty damn pleased with this all the same.



Next up is a new 4 rep max on dumbbell press, 50kg each hand. Very happy with this!



Finally here is the big one... new deadlift PB from Monday. This is 165kg, close enough to double bodyweight. You can see it took me a couple of tries to get focussed enough, but I got there in the end!



Currently feeling VERY fired up about beating all of these in the weeks ahead!

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The "Strategic Gluttony" Diet.

Have you heard about this one? You probably haven't yet because I only just dreamed it up last night, but it's my very own gimmick diet program!

A little ironic considering I've called out, exposed, debunked and ridiculed pretty much every gimmick diet going around on my Lose Weight No Bullshit website already, right?

Here's the deal though. It's like I said in my post about marketing the other day... if you eat the right amount and train hard, you get results. All diets work by reducing calories below what is required to maintain weight... some do it in a drastic and unhealthy manner with extremely low calories, and others do it with a more sensible level of intake. The thing with the gimmick diets is that they try to act like there is something else going on... like they've put it together in some special way that means extra results. Well... if you aint eating the correct amount, none of that makes a difference. And if you are eating the right amount, you're going to get results anyway... at best maybe this gimmick diet is giving you a tiny little extra edge to what you would have been getting anyway.

So like I said the other day... outside of simply "hitting your macros" the value of any diet plan should be in terms of "this will make it easy and convenient, and you're sure to succeed", not whatever bro-science type claims they want to make.

As for my Strategic Gluttony idea though, it started as a bit of a laugh talking about pizza. Now, pretty much anyone I know who is successfully getting great results from training, without too much worrying or stress is doing this already anyway... and the other people who are NOT doing it should START doing it. Simply put, the happy and successful people are in the habit of eating about the right amount that their body needs to maintain their goal weight, fuel, adapt and recover from training, and get them through the day. Either they do this through intuition, or they've done the maths (or perhaps asked me to do it for them) and built a plan to meet their requirements that way. But all the same, they have no hesitation, second thoughts, guilt or regret about saying "to hell with it" once in a while and feasting on pizza, or ice cream, or whatever takes their fancy.

So we were talking about pizza and I made a little joke like "I think it is good for your mental health to enjoy gluttony just as much as training". And the more I thought about it... it seemed like a great idea. Fuck feeling guilty about eating for enjoyment... the very meaning of life is to enjoy things and food is no exception!

There's a strategic element too though. Making allowances for a weekly "cheat meal" is a great way to take the pressure and stress out of adhering to the plan. Although it stops being a "cheat" when you have planned for it, right? Also we all know that there is a favourable (leptin) response that occurs when consuming a larger amount of calories after restricting.

Aside from enjoyment and indulgence while still getting results, this is most importantly about mental health too. People need to eat in order to survive, they need to enjoy themselves and indulge once in a while too in order to be happy. There is absolutely no room for feelings of guilt to be associated with eating... but we do need a strategy to make this work in line with our fitness and body composition goals.

I put the idea out on tumblr and the response was so enthusiastic that I went ahead and started a new website, where I'll be writing it all up properly, soon. Check it out: Strategic Gluttony.

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You guys get that the free program is a screening process for potential clients, right?

It's interesting because I've had advice from some people telling me I shouldn't give so much away for free, and to be honest that's how I felt for a long time as well - if people want something they have to pay for it, it's valuable information and I have bills of my own that I need to pay. On the other hand I've had people tell me they've recommended my free program to people, who've told them "if it was any good it wouldn't be free" and gone off and wasted their money on some other crap like fkn Ashy Bines or something.

First up though let's talk about training in real life. Training with me is not cheap. I mean, for what you get I actually think it is incredibly good value... but it's a substantial investment. That's a screening process too because I'm charging for sessions with me, instructions via email for training on days without me, nutritional guidelines and me checking that you've been logging your meals... all that stuff. And you pay for the lot, by the month... so... this is exclusively for people who are serious about getting results, right? People who don't want to train often enough to get results, don't want to fix their nutrition, don't want to commit to the program... they're filtered out right away.

NOW Online PT is similar. You gotta be serious, you gotta listen to my advice, and do what it takes to get results. And it doesn't really require anything extravagant, difficult or unreasonable. Just eat the right amount, and hit the gym for an hour most days.

There's not much that's more rewarding to me than giving someone some advice or a program and having them come back a few weeks later reporting amazing results. Unfortunately though... a lot of people will need your advice, want your advice, ASK for your advice... but they're not really to TAKE or ACT on your advice. And that shit gets FRUSTRATING.

The program actually has a lot built in to try to combat this, to make people realise that there is no reason why they should not be successful, and to spell out in a very simple and straight forward manner how to ensure success. Do the maths to estimate your calorific requirements, and hit the gym with a full body resistance program, plus interval training once or twice a week. SIMPLE.

So the situation was... concerned with how many people were picking up & following bad advice from other sources, and as for being asked for advice myself... generally speaking, people from tumblr take it, act on it and get results, people from facebook take it, don't act on it, come back for more advice a month or two later, don't act on that either. In either case my advice is always the same, so why not just write it all up in one place and if it available to anyone who needs it?

So NOW, I get more messages along the lines of "hey I've been following your free program and I love it, it all makes such good sense and it's working out perfectly... where do I sign up for the Coaching Via Email program?" and when I get asked for advice from new people I can just tell them "everything you need to know is in the free program, study up on that". If they're ready for it... they'll go study up, start getting results on their own, and come back ready for the Online Personal Training program.

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