Lately, I’ve seen articles, headlines, and advertising that all have one theme in common…

• The one thing you need to do to lose weight
• The one secret that nobody is telling you for how to build massive muscles
• The one trick to jump-start your metabolism
• The one supplement everybody needs, but nobody knows about
• The one strategy celebrities use to build movie-muscles in just weeks

You’ve probably seen titles like this, too. Each one is boasting not just a solution to a modern problem, but THE solution. It’s like they’re saying, if you know this one thing, it’ll change your life for the better. Maybe true, but I think there’s a little more to this than meets the eye…

Now, let me get one thing straight before we begin. I am NOT against offering tips and solutions that provide tangible benefits to people who need help. You’ll find that I do this all the time on Physical Living. Good information is not the problem – it’s the misrepresentation or misapplication of good information.

Let me show you an example of how this “one thing” marketing technique can be abused…

The one thing you need to do to lose weight… is start the new ABC exercise program.

This may not be untrue, but it can be incredibly misleading. You see, this statement implies that if you only do one thing, you’ll lose weight. It sounds too good to be true, and often it is. What that statement does NOT indicate is that weight loss is a little more complicated than that. It’s not very complicated – in fact, it’s very simple – but not so simple that one minor change will produce the desired results every time. That statement doesn’t explain that almost everyone who starts a new exercise program also increases their daily calorie intake somewhat subconsciously. It’s the body’s natural way of finding homeostasis. If you start burning more energy, your appetite will increase to compensate for the immediate loss of energy in the form of calories burned. Unless you actively prevent an increase in daily calorie consumption in addition to your new exercise program, you have a very poor chance of losing weight. I bet you didn’t discern that from the ad, though.

The truth is that there are quite many things missing from one simple promise like that. Problems, and especially health and fitness problems, are very rarely solved by making just one change to our lifestyle, but from a combination of things.
Continue reading The ONE Thing You Need to Know About Your Fitness