3 simple question to ask to help sharpen your BS filter

In a time where it is easy to feel overwhelmed with all the information we could ever imagine at our fingertips - we also need to be our most critical. 

I heard this quote from a health & fitness podcaster a while back and it really stuck: 
“There is comfort in facts, so much so that we have stopped questioning where those facts have come from”

It feels good when we are given blatant and simple advice - certainty is comfortable: 

• “Cut out carbs at night”

• “This supplement will fix your hormones”

• “Don’t lift heavy in your luteal phase”

• “Just do this one exercise and you'll never plateau again”.

I love the industry I work in. I love that coaches and health professionals are able to engage with audiences all over the world in ways we never have before via social media, youtube and podcasts. But, also, it frustrates me. Most of the time I find it hard to put into words my frustrations with quick fixes and huge “biohacking” promises that are prominent and sold in the health, fitness and performance industry. 

We all just want to feel good, train hard, get strong, eat well and make progress. But to do this we are often stuck sorting through a dumpster fire of:

• conflicting advice

• outdated “facts”

• influencer agendas. 
  

This quote was written about the medical field - but it perfectly applies to fitness, nutrition and performance advice too - and the problems with mass prescription of over-simplistic or grifty health and fitness advice:

“…the day-to-day practice of medicine is about caring for the individual. While we physicians fill our days providing sound advice to our patients, there are, by comparison, remarkably few recommendations that we can make to the population as whole. Everyone should exercise and wear seatbelts, nobody should smoke or drink excessively, and everyone should receive childhood vaccines. Not only are these types of recommendations limited in number, they are also neither terribly interesting nor surprising … Once we get beyond basic recommendations it becomes difficult to give health advice to large populations. Anybody who has ever been interviewed by the lay press realises this immediately. After every recommendation you utter, a wave of caveats floods your brain….” - Why Dr. Oz Makes Us Crazy by Adam S. Cifu, MD

If you've ever felt information overload, or gotten caught up with a hack, or trend, or a solution, or a nutrition/training “rule”, I get it.

Here are 3 simple rules to help sharpen your BS filter and think more critically about the information your are reading:

1. Ask: is this a blanket recommendation? Are they making it seem black/white, ignoring the grey and stripping all the nuance out of this?
   If advice is delivered like a commandment, “fruit is bad” “deadlifts will hurt your back” - thats a red flag. Extremely complex information packaged in the most reductionist, black and white version, as if we are all so silly we all need our information stripped of its nuance. Just because we inevitably click on gimmicky and hook line posts, doesn’t mean we don’t want to understand the complexities behind it.
   
   Ask yourself:

   Does this leave room for context?
   Would it be advice I would tell someone with a different age, health status, or training history?
   Is it trying to reduce a complex topic down to a one-size fits all rule?
   
   If it sounds oversimplified, it probably is.
   
   Great coaches and health professionals don’t speak in absolutes. They ask questions, consider context, leave room for options, and are flexible in their approaches and advice based on your data and feedback
   
   

2. Ask: is this actually helpful with my health & wellbeing in mind, or is it just trying to sell me something?
   There is nothing wrong with people selling their products or expertise (I mean, Im a coach), but there is something wrong with making this solution as marketable as possible with fear mongering, and selling something through the lens of guilt or false hope. Pay attention to how the message makes you feel. Does it genuinely inform you? Or does it make you feel completely broken prior to selling you the shiny solution? Because great advice should make you feel empowered, and actually understand your body or your training a little better. 
   
   

3. Ask: where is this information actually coming from?
   Some people may be using anecdotal evidence, or maybe even just making stuff up based on how they have interpreted information. Others are putting out advice leading with it being science-backed…Experts say…Evidence shows…. okay cool?
   
   Most of us don't know how research realllllly works, or how to read that super academic paper on that one mechanism that supposedly supports their claim. And we shouldn’t be expected to.
   
   Understand that:
   One study can support almost anything, especially if you are reading it with a strong bias or cherry-picking information.
   Research is always evolving and changing.
   Some advice from the 1960’s would still stick, but in other cases and with more recent data, we know better.
   
   Thinking critically means staying curious. So if you read something with a strong claim:
   Google those claims.
   Ask a trusted coach or health care professional.
   Maybe ask our mate ChatGPT where this source got their information from.
   
   Or better yet, follow people who do link their sources, explain the limitations, who make it clear that recommendations made to large groups often do not apply to all individuals, and who don’t pretend to have all the answers. 

TLDR:
The health and fitness industry is amazing, we love it, but it is loud, and it's not getting quieter. Heres what you need to remember. You can pause, and you can ask questions..
Ask yourself:

1. Is this black/white thinking?

2. Is this helping, or fearmongering?

3. Where did this “fact” come from?

— MWBC Coaching Team