Beware of the fitness fraud!

When browsing trough Youtube and you are at least somewhat interested in sports, chances are high you
will encounter fairly muscular people telling you how to eat/train/sleep to look like them.
At least that is the premise.

In truth they will try to sell you products and use their drugged up body in videos as a marketing tool.
Often enough people actually buy their overpriced crap, which is sad, since nothing of what is presented
by those people is of any use.

Let us dismantle the whole fitness influence hustle then:

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Misconception #1: They look good, so they know a lot about the sport!

Truth: Most fitness influencers use performance enhancing drugs to look like that.
If they admit taking drugs they downplay the role of steroids dramatically. In fact people who just use modest amounts of testosterone will outperform any natural athlete with little to no training at all.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm199607043350101

Therefore, those influencers don’t even have to have great knowledge nor skill to achieve their looks.
Most are just ruthless/dumb enough to jump on gear.

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Misconception #2: But their workout/meal plans are said to be good.

Truth: When it comes to workout schedules you can’t really mess things up, if you know the basics.
A good workout plan always uses these routines with some slight variations:

SquatLeg Press (Pushing Leg movement)
Deadlifts (Pulling Leg movement)
Benchpress/Dips (Pressing Upper body movement)
Row (Pulling Upper body movement)
Shoulder Press/Incline Benchpress (Pressing upper body movement)
Pull Up (Pulling upper body movement)
+ some accessory work like triceps, biceps, core exercises
No need to buy some fancy program!

Funny anecdote: There once was a case, when one of those fitness gurus (he was full of steroids of course) was facing trouble because he stole a workout plan from another influencer and sold them as his own.

I don’t know who is to pity more: the guy who didn’t even put the effort into his „product“ to design it on his own or the person accusing him of stealing, after all it’s a rat fighting a rat + there are only so many exercises, of course programs will look very similar to each other if you do it correctly.

When it comes to dieting it’s even more frustrating. Almost all dieting plans are rather unrealistic to maintain. One YouTubes personalities cookbook was so bad, that the low fat approach led to women experiencing health issues when following the guru's eating plan.

The human body needs about 1-2g of protein per kg of bodyweight and about 1g of fat per kg of bodyweight, fill the rest of the needed calories with carbs and your diet will most likely look quite healthy.
Especially if you add in some fruits and vegetables and leave out sweets, alcohol highly processed food etc. -things that are common knowledge.

Recipes are all over the internet, so again no need to buy any stupid cookbook for inflated prices from those fitness influencers.

Another funny anecdote: Once a woman, I knew told people on how she bought this cookbook and training protocol from this popular YouTuber and in fact she lost some weight for about 3 weeks, then she got even fatter with each day. Oh and the recipes were really good, it just contained fish, eggs and chicken but mostly fish. What genius does it need to discover, that fish is a good source of protein?

As a bonus people started to recognize the fish smell on her, since that was almost 90% of what she ate.

Bonus: Another person bought a different protocol and he had quite the portfolio to choose from:
When he signed into the gurus website a bunch of pictures with roided men appeared and he was asked to click on the persons body he wants to achieve and it spit out the training protocol which would ultimately lead to that specific body type.

If this would be any honest it should give you the steroids protocol.
What can be done?
Just don’t look at them and thumbs down or sign „no interest“!
Spread the word and motivate people to understand the basics of nutrition and exercise.

Especially focus on good form on your exercises.
Pay attention to the basics and not to YT.
And don’t pay for shit marketed on YT.