How to spot a weight loss salesman

The coaching industry needs to be regulated

The following Thread recently showed up in my feed.

Strength coach CJ Gotcher, who does a great job debunking fitness information, offered a great summation of the marketing tactic.

Curiosity piqued, I clicked through to this coach’s handle.

I visited his website. While I generally don’t randomly comment on people’s posts, the term “coach” jumped out. I wanted to understand his clinical nutrition training.

Twenty pounds in four months isn’t an incredible claim. The general “one pound per week” is a healthy amount for those interested in weight loss, and I’ve seen far more egregious examples of miracle diets.

So I scoured his long website, which is a basic marketing template packed with SEO keywords. First red flag. I’m not inherently against marketing sites, but it took me some time to read through all the anecdotes and hype trying to identify where this coach was trained.

Nothing.

But it’s certainly heavy on selling.

And so I replied to the coach. (I would share the exact transcript, but given that he locked me after two brief exchanges, that thread is now history.)

My basic response: I implied that maybe people were upset because he’s offering nutrition advice with no credentials, to which he replied that he’s helped over 450 clients lose weight. (His handle says 400, his website 420, but I’m not expecting consistency here.)

I then replied that anecdotes are not data, to which he replied something about us both working in fitness and that we should be on the same page.

My next response was something along these lines:

Yes, and that’s why I only taught modalities that I was trained in, and when students asked about health advice, I told them to go to their doctor or a physical therapist, and if they requested nutrition advice, I said to find a registered dietitian, because fitness instructors have a moral obligation to remain within their scope of practice.

Then he blocked me.