The answer is simple

"The answer is simple"...is always more effective a response than, "well, it's complicated."

This is a quote from Seth Godin from a blog post found here. While Mr. Godin is famous for his work with business and leadership, I think this quote and his blog post has a lot to offer when we look at fitness and health.

Health and fitness is complicated when we get into the science of the intricate biology and physiology of how our body works at a micro genetic and cellular level all the way to the macro systems levels. So those of us that read hundreds of research articles often have very complicated answers to try and fully explain in accurate detail what might be best. Many people peddling fitness and health info, unintentionally and sometimes intentionally, offer simplistic (and wrong) fables on ways to improve fitness and health that mislead many of us. They take a complicated science report and twist it into something simple that fits their needs to sell something. It’s interesting that they then complicate what they are selling to make it seem like it is one-of-a- kind, and health and fitness can only be accomplished if you use their product. Usually these have a testimony from people (preferably a movie star or pro athlete) to endorse it, “because it changed their life”, “nothing has ever been able to do what product X does for me” or something similar.

Mr. Godin offers some suggestions to lead to better information exchange in his blog post:

1. Take complicated overall answers and make them simple steps instead. Teach complexity over time, simply.
2. Teach a few people, the committed, to embrace the idea of complexity. That's what a great college education does, for example. That's what makes someone a statesman instead of a demagogue. Embracing complexity is a scarce trait, worth acquiring. But until your customers/voters/employees do, I think the first strategy is essential.

You can't sell complicated to someone who came to you to buy simple.

In health and fitness it seems we want something simple, yet get tricked into buying or following something that complicates things like the latest diet fad or exercise craze as the magic thing to get us healthy. When it can really be as simple as doing basic exercise and eating healthy portion controlled food to make sure we don’t take in more food then we burn off in a day. But who can sell that and make lots of money?

So remember to keep it simple and slowly learn the complexity over time if you want.