The Road to Failure

Aren’t you sick and tired of reading health and fitness columns repeating the same old information on how to lose weight, improve strength and feel your best? Well I’m a little tired of those too, so I thought I’d shake it up a bit by giving you all the tips you need to successfully fail with your health and fitness program. Now you’ve probably figured out by now that a true health and fitness professional would never intend for their clients to fail so please think of this as “reverse psychology.” Follow along closely and you’ll soon learn effective strategies to ensure the failure of any health and fitness program!


o Don’t Set Goals – Goal setting? Why should we set goals? Most people suggest that to succeed at something you should set SMART goals, or goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Reward-Based and within a certain Time Frame. If you don’t want to succeed, then don’t bother setting goals.

o Don’t Ask for Help – The best way to fail at any health and fitness regimen is to try it on your own. Working with a fitness and health professional will only help you achieve your goals more quickly, improve your self-confidence, teach you tools necessary for long-term success and help hold you accountable. Who wants that?

o Don’t Plan a Schedule – Time management is only for individuals who want to accomplish a lot throughout the day. If you prefer inconsistent workouts and subpar results consider avoiding consistent workouts altogether!

o Eat However You’d Like! - Diets aren’t important if you don’t care about losing weight! Really! Maybe you’ve heard that if you exercise, you can eat whatever you want. Not so. Unless you watch your daily caloric intake, you won’t lose weight, and could even gain pounds, even while exercising. But if a stable, healthy weight and feeling great is not important, don’t pay any attention to your diet.

o Think Short Term & Give Up Easily! - Who said immediate gratification is a bad thing? Failure with your exercise and diet goals is guaranteed if you exercise intermittently, and pay attention to your diet just once in awhile. If you aren’t getting the results you want right away? Hey, why not just give up. Who wants to be healthy, anyway?

o Follow Trends Closely! – Five-Minute Abs, The Thigh Master, Lose 10 pounds in 10 Days, and many other televised products generate lots of excitement because they promise mega-quick results with little effort. And they will surely let you down. For certain failure, these quick gimmicks are the way to go!

I hope you had fun with the deliberate and well-intentioned sarcasm of this week’s column. As a health and fitness professional, my job is to help everyone succeed.

Setting appropriate goals, working with a professional, managing your time, mustering determination, and working at it diligently and consistently will make you a happier, healthier, more successful person. The road to failure in this week’s column serves to alert us of the potholes that can de-rail us all. Watch out for them!