Why Trends Feel True—Even When the Data Says Otherwise

Comedian Nate Bargatze has a great bit about the smart and dumb parts of our brains.

 

It’s a joke, but it lands because there’s truth hiding in there.

 

We all make decisions driven more by emotion than logic.  These mental shortcuts, known as cognitive biases, quietly shape our choices. And in health and fitness, they can send us down some strange paths.

 

Here are some of the biggest tricks we play on ourselves.

 

 

This is the heavyweight champ of logical fallacies.  The error is that when something aligns with our views, we latch onto it.  But when it doesn’t, we toss it aside. 

 

So our “research” isn’t actually research, it’s a hunt for evidence that proves we’re already right.  But it’s tough to find enlightenment when you’re living in an echo chamber.

 

We tend to emulate what successful people do because they finished on top.

If your gym pal puts 40 pounds on their squat doing Smolov, suddenly it’s treated like strength gospel. Never mind the people who got crushed, burned out, or injured.

 

Or because Tour de France riders take in 120 grams of carbs an hour, every weekend warrior decides to shove down gels but ignores the masses waiting in line at the porta-potty.

 

The lesson here is that different contexts and different physiologies can yield very different outcomes.

 

 

One shiny detail makes everything look good.

 

As covered last week, slap “9g protein” on a candy bar, and suddenly it’s health food.  Or, if a trainer has abs, then they must be an expert.

 

However, in these contexts, it’s not the true merit of the item, but the branding that’s doing the heavy lifting.

 

For a good reality check, @cheatdaydesign has an awesome series of redesigning food labels to make anything look “healthy.” 

 

Here’s Coke rebranded five different ways.

 

If enough people swear by something, it starts to feel true, and this is all over the health and fitness space.

 

Keto, barefoot running, cold plunges, protein cookies, greens powders… the list goes on.

 

I’m not saying the trends are worthless, but popularity and evidence aren’t the same thing, and often, things catch on simply because everyone else is doing them.

 

 

The latest thing always feels like the most important thing.

 

A few days of clean eating can overshadow a weekend of beer and game day food.  Or a couple of great workouts can make you forget the weeks you hit the snooze button.

The issue here is that whatever just happened tends to dominate our perception, regardless of whether it's true or not.

It’s hard to overcome our cognitive biases, as they are wired into our brains. But we can manage them with awareness of these logical fallacies, and using data helps even more. 

Because data doesn’t care about our feelings, or what’s trending, or what a shredded influencer swears by.

 

Research is the anchor that keeps us from drifting into fantasy land.

Next week, we’ll unpack what it actually means to “do your own research”—a phrase that gets thrown around constantly in health and fitness, often without a clue what it really implies.