I'll warn that that advice is like "get a therapist". They're weakly regulated/certified titles, and there are many people calling themselves as such offering terrible advice and plans.

I don't think they're worthless by any means, good ones are great. However, you need to carefully vet them rather than trusting their advice by default to the degree you might (or should be able) to trust a doctor or the like.

The primary function of a personal trainer / nutritionist is not the advice they give, but that they force you to show up at the gym and keep track of what you're eating. It's 90% outsourcing of willpower and 10% knowledge.

If you're treating that as their primary function, you're just throwing away money, tons of money.

If you decide you want to work out and eat right, take responsibility for it and truly make the personal choice. Or buy a couple of self-help books to learn some techniques. E.g. The Power of Habit. It'll be orders of magnitude cheaper.

This argument is a bit self defeating. You can easily replace the information a personal trainer gives with a standard training program and YouTube videos that show proper exercise form. You cannot easily replace its willpower function with a book.

That doesn't work for most people, so they put money on the line.

A regular personal trainer at a top gym is $12k/year. That’s not that much. It’s approx $23k pre-tax which isn’t a game changer tbh.

You do realize that for an average American that’s half of their annual income?

But we aren’t average are we, Bruce?

I worked as a GMAT/GRE tutor for a while. The same was true in that field.

This doesn't describe the fast majority of out of shape people. Poverty has always been an issue, but obesity and poor health from a sedentary lifestyle is a very new issue.

“Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn't. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you.”

― George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier

I see you are down voted, but there must be some truth to this. In my group at work there are a couple of other guys the same age as me - mid 40s. I cycle to work and am in decent shape for my age (resting pulse around 60). The other two are overweight and look a lot older than me. They must be paid well enough and they clock off at 6pm. As for poverty - most of my exercise is cycling to work. The bike saves me money - I have had it for 7 years and it originally cost less than a years worth of public transport.

You’re not wrong, but I know a lot of people who just don’t prioritize it in even though they could. Sure, people scraping by to make ends meet don’t have this luxury. But the people that go to happy hour all the time and then complain about not having time to excercise just don’t have their priorities correct in my opinion

There are a lot of people who use not enough time, money, etc as an excuse. If your doctor told you the only way for you to see another year was to get in shape and eat right, how would you prioritize then? Would you still go to the movies? Go out for drinks and food?

For the people who absolutely can't afford it, there's a lot of good information for free online. My point is that for many of us, we treat professional help as a luxury or explain it away rather than embrace it as a necessity.

The real wealth in life is your health.

> For the people who absolutely can't afford it, there's a lot of good information for free online.

There's also tons of it that's downright horrible or outright dangerous. The simple truth is that most professional help in the US is out of reach of most people unless they're willing to take on a significant debt the their salary doesn't support. It's not as clear cut always as "health is most important" -- it's not even clear how much any given procedure will cost two different people with the same insurance for the exact same process.

>If your doctor told you the only way for you to see another year was to get in shape and eat right, how would you prioritize then? Would you still go to the movies? Go out for drinks and food?

Maybe not a good example, as if my doctor told me the only way to see another year was to basically cut out a few pleasures in life, I'd just bite the bullet on this one, and I imagine quite a few others would also. This isn't suicide ideation or anything, it's more just a value judgement; how great will my life be during that year? Right now, without the mental stress of imminent death in my mind, an enfeebled life or one that just racks up a huge bill for those legally closest to me seems pointless.

Ultimately I agree with you that we can make time for ourselves -- an hour walking is better than no time walking, and if you can convert that into 15 minutes of jogging, even better. It's the same time we spend watching our shows on Sunday, and I think we can at least do that for ourselves.

But as someone who loves to cook, hates takeout, etc, there are days when even I just don't have the usual energy to go through and prepare a proper meal or to put the hour into my regularly scheduled run: 12+ hour days do that to you.

"For the people who absolutely can't afford it, there's a lot of good information for free online. My point is that for many of us, we treat professional help as a luxury or explain it away rather than embrace it as a necessity."

Only that the good information is often vague and mixed in with horrific information. Or is grand information for someone in decent shape but horrible advice for you in your health condition.

I'll add that there is more to it than simply getting the right advice. There is basic equipment. I'm not talking about anything fancy: For example, I wear an odd bra size. I'm thin and have large breasts. I have not had surgery to enlarge them. I have to buy at specialty stores here (Norway), and could not find my size in stores in the states (indiana). A regular bra is expensive.

I've never had a sports bra that fits. I often can't find them large enough and the ones that come close and actually offer some support are expensive - plus I have to order them. These are, in general, $60-$100 each. I have a similar issue with bathing suits, so even if I had free access to a pool, I couldn't actually use it.

Shoes have been an issue in the past as well. Buying the cheapest shoes possible, I was wearing through shoes withing 2-3 months and trying to keep them for 4-6 months. This is without exercise putting additional stress on the shoes.

The other issue I found with such things while being poor was hunger. Even if I walked, had an active job, and/or wasn't too strenuous with motion, increased hunger was an issue. $25/week for food doesn't go far. Especially not in a house with bad heat (60 degrees if it wasn't too cold out). More activity meant that I was miserable more simply due to hunger.