Dishonestly Honest

Logical Fallacies of Modern Fitness

I try to not live in an echo chamber, re-evaluate old ideas, and incorporate new ones. With that in mind it’s tempting to bite on “rage bait” and the outright lies, omissions, and misdirections in the health and fitness space online.

Rather than call out or confront anyone in particular, I want to challenge the architecture of these ideas and point out (1) that my grievances aren’t personal, nor a judgment of value, and (2) that the ideas may not be totally wrong, but are either intentionally or unintentionally misleading.

Photo by ᴊᴀᴄʜʏᴍ ᴍɪᴄʜᴀʟ on Unsplash

Information without context is noise. Everyone online and in media are begging for attention. The health and fitness spaces are certainly no exception to this; they may even be the forefront.

Fear and anxiety sell. Uniting around a common enemy sells. Grandiose promises sell. Charismatic leaders with “the” answers sell. These are the fertile grounds from which mass psychosis grows.

Here, I want to bring attention to some of the logical fallacies I see proliferating in our industry. The punchline should be “don’t do your own research” — which usually means copy / parrot someone else’s homework — do the real work yourself. Don’t trust, verify.

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Appeal to Nature:

AKA: The “ancestral” trap.

First, we should note that this isn’t cope for industrialized hyper-palatable “products” — which actually falls into the below “false dilemma” category.

What I’m talking about here is the claim that “because something is natural, it’s good for you, and if it’s not natural, it’s bad for you.” I’m going to blow your minds here, but could I interest you in some organic poison?

There’s a lot of poisonous plants, bacteria, fungi, etc. that grow without pesticides in the wild that will kill you all the same if consumed. But, hey, they’re organic right?

Further, substances and organisms like viruses and heavy metals are ubiquitous in the environment we call “Earth.” As such, our immune system has evolved to handle small, environmentally congruent amounts. Note, that this is gravely different than washing your hands in Round-Up and licking receipts.

Dosage, exposure time, and route of administration all matter.

Additionally, a lot of modern technology (communications, housing, transportation) is pretty "un-natural.” Does that make it bad? Is it inherently worse than “natural options” like walking or riding a horse? No, though there are certainly trade offs.

As I’ve reiterated before, and others have as well, “ancestral health” (including anthropology) is a starting point, not a destination. Results matter. Assuming that prior practices will lead to a future destination also falls into hindsight bias.

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The False Dilemma:

AKA: The binary cage.

This where we’re forced to pick sides, or be condemned by both. Obviously, this has been the prolific narrative in American politics for 50 years. Unfortunately, that methodology has blown up in many other areas of life since 2020.

It gets presented as:

• You’re either “team carnivore” or “team diabetic big pharma.”

• You’re either “team vegan” or “team misogyny and cruelty.”

• You’re “healthy at any size” or “a right wing extremist.”

Your diet doesn’t need a trademarked title, it needs nutrients. Your musculature and connective tissue don’t respond to “weight”, they respond to tension. Don’t let someone else’s “rules” keep you from the next level. Real winners celebrate others’ success. They don’t tell them to “stay in their lane” (see “appeal to authority” below).

If you haven’t noticed, there are a lot of people on Earth. Almost all of us will go on to die on a random day, with unfinished projects, words unsaid, dreams unrealized, and the world will keep turning.

There is an infinite number of ways to get there. Let’s hope it’s more interesting than what socially constructed “camp” we build a flimsy and insecure identify around. Bumper stickers, retweets, and joining a Facebook group won’t make changes for you.

As we’ll see in this article and should often be reminded (by Tomas Sowell), “there are no solutions, only trade-offs.”

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The Anecdotal Fallacy:

AKA: The N-of-1 authority.

Speaking of those Facebook groups… this one is recognizable as “it worked for me, therefore it’s the best option for everyone under all conditions, for all time.” It’s also commonly paired with the “hindsight bias” below and conflating correlation with causation — failing to rule out covariates.

Obviously, I encourage people to do, think, and discover things for themselves. The problem is when we think too highly of ourselves and start to ignore the equally valid data that other people have different experiences even of the same conditions, situations, and interventions.

A “placebo effect” is a real effect that produces real results. However, it is not a valid or reliable clinical intervention. Facts don’t care about your feelings.

In the words of Dan John, “everything works… for about 6 weeks.” A “study” is much more robust if we look at 600 people over 6 years. If that sounds “boring” to you, then I’m guessing your New Year’s resolution isn’t going so well in March.

Further, our lives are incredibly dynamic. Much to the point here, what “worked” and made you “feel” good 6 years ago, may have dramatically different effects based on parenthood, training age, injury, or any number of very human events that weren’t included in or accounted for in your original “N of 1 study.”

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The Appeal to Authority:

AKA: Trust me, I’m a doctor.

This is the counterpart to N-of-1 above. It goes something like “As a X (insert profession or credential), my opinion is Y (and you should believe me).” Additionally, it’s used as “so-and-so (with XYZ credentials or experience) agrees with me, therefore you’re wrong.”

We also see a gross overreaching of scope and specialties here. Medical doctors in the US receive virtually no training in nutrition (as of 2026). Someone with a black belt in BJJ isn’t necessarily a black belt in coaching, let alone a good fitness coach.

There are a lot of “dumb” people with PhDs. You can “earn” any number of personal trainer credentials in a week or two for about $1,000. You can “do a job for 20 years” and still be bad at it.

This type of argument frequently devolves to “respect my authority and stay in your lane.” However, a kicker I love from Tim Grover is that “the only reason for an individual to tell you to stay in your lane is so they can stay in front of you.”

Real authority doesn’t have anything to hide and doesn’t mind being questioned, it invites it. Stand on business, not credentials.

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The Red Herring:

AKA: Poisoning the well.

An unrelated “evil” is introduced when technical flaws are confronted, resulting in an endless “whack-a-mole” discussion. Classically, trying to explain the nutritional bio-availability of animal food compared to plant food with a vegan can erode into a discussion about ecology, and when that fails it can fall back to the defensible position of moral superiority.

This also took notable form in the 2010s as the “keto craze” came to critical mass and all the junk food companies started making “keto-friendly” products — junk food. The message was that “carbs are bad.”

We’ve also seen the flip side recently where the accurate “protein is good” campaign is co-opted by big food manufacturers pouring whey protein into (still) junk food.

The red herring argument also goes like “we just need to X” and as we’ve already discussed, there are rarely universally positive solutions and always trade-offs.

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Selective Reversibility:

AKA: Special pleading.

This one is almost as common in counter-culture as appeals to authority are in the mainstream; “rules for thee, but not for me.” It goes something like; “If you have to stay on medications, then by definition those medications are not a cure. Try this diet instead.”

The problem here is that the same logic applies to dietary interventions. If you need to stay on a certain (elimination) diet to suppress symptoms, then by definition that diet has also not cured you.

To that point, symptom reduction is a valid treatment option. Of course, it isn’t a “cure”, but that isn’t the claim that’s being made. Myopic representations of treatment abound from both the pharmaceutical and dietary advocates.

Does one of those have more or more detrimental side effects or “trade-offs” than the other? Perhaps, but that does not change the invalidity of the original argument.

It also creates a slippery slope where one is to presume that medications are “never” helpful, and that diet is “always” the answer, leading us back to the “binary cage” and “red herring” above.

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False Equivalence:

AKA: Survival vs. optimization.

One prominent doctor has commented that; "I’ve never once seen anybody’s electrolytes get deranged by going on a carnivore diet." Here’s the problem; avoiding a medical crisis is not nearly the same as maintaining (electrolyte) levels that support the performance(s) I wish to achieve.

Some people have a lot of growing up to do. If you’re worried about the anti-nutrients from a few MILLIgrams of rosemary on 0.5 Kg ribeye, or the parts per BILLION of lead in your salt, you need a hobby. Your obsession is literally off by a several orders of magnitude.

Likewise, I wholeheartedly agree that most of our nutrients should come from whole food. As we’ve seen many times over, the “snack” and supplement industries have us grasping for all kinds of magical pills and potions. However, if you’re going to make the case that creatine, Vitamin D/K2, and electrolytes (Mg, Na, K) are somehow detrimental, you’ve got a long row to hoe as well.

On the other hand it is often more effective to “remove” distractions than add magic. But again, this is a temporary and strategic intervention. A race towards the bottom doesn’t help anyone. Avoidance is a terrible strategy for success.

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Hindsight Bias:

AKA: Correlation-Causation blur.

“I spent 20 years training X, then changed my diet to Y and implemented Z exercise trend. Therefore my current success is attributable to Y and Z.” Another version of this looks like “so-and-so did X under Y conditions”, which also falls into the above false equivalence.

For example, if someone runs a marathon fasted, or with a Marlboro in their mouth, should we all do the same? Furthermore, the real question isn’t “did they do it”, it’s “did they win?”

If they did win, what does the aggregate data say? We learn a lot more from studying trends of, say, Olympic gold medalist over the past 12 years than we do (by contrast) a case study of a single person who’s won several gold medals.

That isn’t to say that the case isn’t worth studying, surely it is. However, just as surely, this quickly becomes a shoesalesman pitch. “Wear Nikes instead of Converse and you can ball like Jordan.”

This was also a notable controversy during the “Game Changers” push for anti-meat diets where athletes “switched” for the duration of filming (some with dire consequences) after a lifetime of cultivated genetics and elite training schedules.

Similarly, we can fall in to the trap of using past accomplishments to justify our current practices. In the South we call these “used-to-coulders” because the talk about what they “used to be able” to do. In online fitness circles this bleeds into an appeal to authority based on past accomplishments rather than current status.

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No True Scotsman:

AKA: The purity trap.

When all else fails, there is the purity trap. If my idea didn’t work, you didn’t do it right, or just need to do it harder.

Vegan failed, here’s a magic juice cleanse because there was probably bone broth in your soup.

Keto didn’t work out, try a 7-day fast, because more stress is what we need — you know “authophagy” and “MTOR” and stuff.

Carnivore wrecked your adrenals, maybe just beef, it was probably those egg whites or that accidental strawberry.

There are no bad foods, but here’s a handfull of pills just in case, because, you know, “everything in moderation.”

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Closing the Rogues’ Gallery:

There’s a lot economics can teach us about this situation. There isn’t anything inherently bad about “capitalism” if capital is actually being produced. However, when the fixation becomes “consumption” very little is actually getting produced and we are subject to the whims of people of influence and affluence (state and corporate).

Does that sound familiar? Influencers and authorities selling and policing the consumption of information? “Truth” becomes a product to be marketed. Let’s add some moral judgment and tribal identities to really make sure people stop thinking for themselves.

If you want to stop playing the game of “haves and have-nots”, “knowers and know-nots”, you’re going to have to do. Lead by example, not with a keyboard. Do it alone if you have to. The people who matter will ask, or already know. You don’t need to posture to prove it.

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