Tired of Being a Health and Fitness Sucker?

by Jean Eckenfels, Former Senior Editor, University of Chicago Press

Everywhere you look, another company or industry professes to have the answer to improved health and fitness, yet we are fatter and in worse shape than ever. Well, now we have a weapon against all those hucksters and con artists that have been taking us to the cleaners for years. Craig Pepin-Donat, The Fit Advocate, is an industry insider who has come forward and blown the lid off the health and fitness industry with his new book, The Big Fat Health and Fitness Lie. A proponent of healthy living with over 26 years of experience in some of the highest profile positions within the fitness industry, Pepin-Donat knows every trick of the trade and he tells you how to avoid getting ripped off by products and services that can’t help you.

If you have ever thought about going on a diet, purchasing a piece of home equipment, joining a local health club to get fit or popping a pill to improve your health, hold your horses. As Pepin-Donat outlines in The Big Fat Health and Fitness Lie, “Over 50 million Americans resolve go on a diet each year. We have all seen the images of happy, healthy-looking people who claim they’ve lost all of their excess weight by following some fad diet. But the truth is that no one can stay on a diet forever and once ‘normal’ eating habits resume, the numbers on the scale start heading in the wrong direction. No matter how strong your will power is at the beginning of a diet, as many as 95 percent of those who start a diet, dump it and end up with more pounds than when they started.” The diet and weight loss industry is a $40 billion enterprise designed to make you believe there is an easy solution to weight loss. There isn’t.

But the lie doesn’t stop there. You’ve seen the advertising for gimmicky workout equipment that guarantees fast results? These companies make a fortune with money-back guarantees because they know they will never have to refund your money. And your purchases sit in the corner gathering dust while making you feel guilty. And then there are those workout videos that promise you’ll take off excess pounds, but they soon become so boring you can’t even stand to look at them, much less watch them. So you join the local health club and get the high-pressure sales job and before you know it, you’ve signed a long term contract that will keep exercising your bank account even if you aren’t exercising at all. The Big Fat Health and Fitness Lie pulls no punches and exposes it all.

Or maybe you have decided that you can take the multitude of dietary supplements that claim to make you look better, feel better and live longer. More than half of American adults apparently believe that this is the sure fire way to improved health, but there are no significant clinical studies that have definitively shown supplements to be beneficial. All the while, the supplement industry boasts annual revenue exceeding $20 billion. Each chapter of The Big Fat Health and Fitness Lie delivers the cold, hard truth that will resonate with anyone who has ever thought about self improvement.

But Pepin-Donat doesn’t stop there. He gives you the kind of advice and solutions that you won’t get from the hundreds of self-proclaimed fitness gurus trying to sell you something. His message instills the kind of motivation that will carry you through the steps to a lifetime of living better based on his prescription for success. This is not another four-to six-week quick-fix solution, but a lifelong process that starts with the truth about why our attempts to improve our health have been sabotaged by those looking to profit from our insecurities. It uncovers the reason we are in the worst shape in history and then guides you down the path towards improved health and fitness, for the rest of your life.

In this book you will find an amazing analysis of our addictive culture and how various addictions that most people would never consider undermine our health and actually cause illnesses. Delving far beyond what has been written in the thousands of fitness books on the market, Pepin-Donat throws down the gauntlet on Big Pharma and the drugs we are prescribed for conditions and disease that are largely “self inflicted by our own lifestyle choices.” He exposes government agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration, which is supposed to protect our health but instead has become a tool of the pharmaceutical industry, rushing to get drugs on the market regardless of their safety or efficacy.

Pepin-Donat, has trained thousands of health and fitness professionals and has impacted the lives of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide through his training programs. He walked away from one of the top executive positions in the fitness industry to reveal the truth about health and fitness. He knows all the equipment, its shortcomings and failures and he ranks “the good, the bad and the ugly” of home equipment so that you know what works and what to avoid. He teaches you how to navigate through the marketing and sales games played within the health club industry and how to choose a club and a personal trainer. With his direct and to-the-point style, he uses real life experiences that will amaze and inspire you.

If that isn’t enough, for every one of the issues he discusses, Pepin-Donat provides powerful resources and links to many websites where you can go for further information. If you have doubts about our culture of addiction, go to the resource section in the chapter on addiction. If you want more information about our drug-obsessed society, go to the resource section in the chapter on prescription drugs. If you doubt his word on supplements, go to the resource section in the chapter on the supplement scandal. Everything he writes, he backs up with a scientific foundation for your long-term health, information that is much more important to your overall well being than just dropping a few pounds. His own website is designed to “Protect and Enhance the Lives of Health and Fitness Consumers” and offers a plethora of information, advice and support.

This is the kind of book you buy for yourself and one for anyone you care about. It’s liberating to hear the lies and empowering to learn the truth. The Big Fat Health and Fitness Lie will save you time and money, but more important, it will give you a new burst of determination, to live your life well.

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