Intro
James Fell is a syndicated fitness columnist fo the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, AskMen.com and Catelaine.com. His fitness advice is read by millions of people every month. James runs BodyforWife.com and recently released a brutally honest book about the slow, steady, science-based approach to losing weight.

Matt: Let’s start off with something fun. What do you think the end result will be from Dr. Oz’s Congress appearance last week?

James: People have tremendously short memories. Alternative medicine has been fully embraced by a significant portion of the population. Unfortunately this will have a very brief, temporary effect where it might hurt Dr. Oz a little, but I don’t see it hurting the sales of “miracle” fat-burning supplements at all. I think we will see him come back just as strong as ever. You look at his Facebook page and you can see how many people rallied to his defense after the questioning. They’re blaming the event on Big Government and Big Pharma and all that kind of dumb stuff. There’s a lot of conspiracy theorists out there that will embrace this no matter what. They have the optimism bias and the confirmation bias and it’s just like believing the moon landings were fake or the 9/11 conspiracies.

Matt: So even as the education continues to improve with strong forces like Examine.com and your book you don’t see too much of a change happening?

James: Well I do think that skepticism is on the rise. People are starting to think and not being sucked into things like this so easily. I see this as a sort of general movement where more and more people are going, “Wait a minute!” The internet is a huge part of this, but also a lot of entertainers are helping, like John Oliver for example. His latest video on the Dr. Oz stuff was hilarious. Entertainers are doing a good job helping to spread the word about this kind of stuff, but there’s always going to be the die-hards that you can’t change. They’ll look at situations like this and say that the congresswoman is obviously in the pocket of someone. A lot of people came after Senator Claire McCaskill and said she was in the pocket of Big Pharma so it’s just going to go in one ear and out the other.

Matt: In the recent AskMen’s Pulse Report you were responsible for supplying the people, products, and trends that we should be aware of in health/fitness for the next 12 months. There were several trends that stood out that I’d like to discuss a bit further. The first was that there seems to be a major rise in fitness professionals who follow an evidenced-based approach. What do you think is driving this forward?

James: Well again it’s things like the internet and Facebook. I spend a lot of time on Facebook and I have many friends in the fitness space. These guys are not kidding with each other (laughing). I’m Facebook friends with some of the most respected fitness experts in the world and it’s the stuff that they’re sharing that really resonates. When you see someone write an article who has really good credentials and has been getting results for decades with their clients, you’re going to listen. The articles get shared, liked, and commented on. With the Facebook algorithms set up like they currently are these posts are going to show up more and more. I really think that this is helping to spread the word quite a bit. It’s certainly helping me. Facebook has been very kind to me. I would say that about 60% of my traffic comes from Facebook.

Matt: In the same report you highlighted several tech products and softwares that are starting to have big impacts on the industry. What are you excited about as this technology continues to develop?

James: I think the motion trackers are going to get better and better. One of the biggest issues with obesity primarily is that the more obese a person is the worse they are at telling themselves the truth at how much they really move and how many calories they consume in a day. It’s not to say that they’re bad at math because there are a myriad of different issues that lead to this type of caloric mismanagement. The thing about these trackers is that they can do quite a bit in terms of giving people a baseline idea of how much they’re moving. I’m still sketchy on caloric intake monitors because most people who keep food journals still don’t do a very good job of tracking their intake. But who knows? The technology is going to continually advance. For example, there’s a new product where you can just point it at a banana and it will tell you how many calories are in it. I think that these types of tracking systems can potentially be valuable tools for people. The tools will help individuals to get a better idea of what it takes to regularly be in a calorie deficit to lose weight.

Matt:As a software service for online trainers the StrengthPortal team was happy to see you discuss the rise of online training. How do you think that this new training platform will impact the industry?

James: Honestly I don’t think it will have too much of a negative effect on the in-person training market. There are some people that will need that human interaction no matter what and there are others who are a little more independent learners. I think essentially it’s going to grow a new market rather than cannibalize an old one. In some ways it could be positive because you can grow a new market of people who use online training to start and get really into it. One they get into fitness and health they will continue to hire more trainers. I’ve been doing fitness for over 20 years and I still hire a trainer every once in a while to tune me up and give me new ideas. If these online programs can get new people started who otherwise don’t want to spend that much money to get going it will lead to more potential clients for trainers down the road. After a few years these fitness consumers will be willing to dedicate more money into their fitness and health and find a qualified trainer to take their training to a new level. You can only go so far online. I think it’s good for getting people started, but nothing replaces humans.

Matt: That’s interesting. I guess I have a slightly different take because I have seen online trainers delivering a very human training experience. In my perfect world I would want everyone to do in-person training while starting to learn technique and build a base of strength. Once that base is built up the individual has the potential to pursue whatever interests them in the fitness world whether it be strength, endurance, or a sport. I think this is where online training comes in perfectly because you can access some of the greatest coaches in the world online for a cost-effective price.

James: From there people will want that hands on technique training though. They will want the face-to-face interaction to cover not just technique, but motivation as well. A big part of every personal trainers job is to play psychologist. Clients need to learn how to move better, but they also bring a lot of issues to the gym and expect you to handle it. It’s therapeutic for them. If you don’t want to play the psychologist a bit then you’re in the wrong business (laughing).

Matt: Great point. There will definitely need to be a balance between in-person and online training. I’m excited to see how the new platform develops over the next few years!

Let’s switch over to writing. First of all, I really enjoy your writing style and have been reading your blog for about half a year now. Your writing is very straight-forward and easy to connect with. Can you talk about how you developed and improved your writing over time?

James: Well I don’t read too much fitness writing to be honest. One of the reasons why I became a fitness writer was because I didn’t really like what I saw out there. A lot of it was bad information back when I started six years ago, but good information is finally seeping through now. I thought other writers style was really boring. It was either this group hug, Oprah sort of thing or this macho, chest thumping bullshit that made me want to gag. When I got started doing this I recognized that Johnny Carson’s immortal words were spot on,  “People will pay more to be entertained than to be educated.” A lot of readers were reading these articles mostly for the entertainment value. They would read to kill time at their boring jobs or whatever and will most likely be more attracted to entertaining, amusing writing. When I decided to leap into writing it took off immediately. I had this style where I poked fun at myths and b.s. while also poking fun at myself and people latched on to it. Within a year I had a column at the L.A. Times.

I am a good salesmen though (laughing). I have an MBA and was in business for a dozen years so it wasn’t just the writing. I was relentless in my pursuit of exposure. I cold called the L.A. Times to get that column.

Matt: That’s awesome. To build off of that, do you have any advice for young fitness writers looking to improve their skills and build their audience?

James: The first thing I would do is give them a warning that your writing will not directly increase your business. Just because you have an article in the L.A. Times doesn’t mean that people will be beating down your door to work with you. I am one of the most read fitness columnists in North America and I also have a consulting service. I still do not get that many requests that just come in out of the blue. If I want to take on new consulting clients I have to chase them down. The writing really helps in terms of supporting my overall position in the field and makes sales a little bit easier, but in terms of expecting someone to read your stuff and immediately want to pay for your services, that just won’t happen very often. You should be doing if for the joy of it, to spread good information out there, but also for the money. You should write for people who are going to pay you. Being a writer is a good thing to have on your resume.

In terms of the approach, you want to find your voice. I like to write columns where people get to know me over time. L.A. Times, Chicago Tribune, AskMen, and my blog and all these places where people get used to seeing me over and over again. I write in first person, share a lot of personal anecdotes, stories to provide context, etc. The other thing I do is read a lot of funny stuff as well. I read Cracked.com quite a bit as well as good political and good entertainment writers. I search for people that make me laugh and I look at the way they turn phrases, set up jokes, and create a storyline for the readers. I look at these various styles and try to create it into my own hodge-podge, warped, mental illness writing style that people seem to like (laughing). If you want to write entertaining stuff you have to read entertaining stuff and that’s something a lot of writers overlook. There are some good fitness writers out there, but in large the funniest writers out there are not writing about fitness. They’re writing about entertainment, politics, and gender issues amongst other things.

Matt: Is there one writer in particular you really enjoy and learn from?

James: Oh absolutely. I actually thanked him in the acknowledgements of my book. His name is Steven Brust and he is a fantasy writer I’ve followed for years. He had this series about a character named Vlad Taltos that I started when I was 16 years old which put the power of first person into my brain when I was a teenager. This character had a really powerful internal monologue that just grabbed you and I would buy every new book that came out. From the first book I was hooked and when I started writing I kind of ended up writing like this main character (laughing). There were many other fantasy and science fiction writers who contributed to my style. Another great first person writer was Roger Zelanzy and his Chronicles of Amber series as well as John Varley who’s written some excellent stuff. After that it’s been a lot of newpapers and stuff online, but those are the big three for me. They just happened to all be from sci-fi and fantasy.

Matt: Well now I’m super stoked because I have new reading material!

You’re book, Lose It Right, was just released in which you deliver a slow, steady, science-based approach to getting fit and losing weight. Even though the book is targeting the average fitness consumer what lessons could fitness professionals take away from reading it?

James: There is a lot of stuff in there on eating behavior, which very few people really understand. As a result of writing this book I’ve become a leading person in the fitness field about eating behavior. I’m not a registered dietician and I don’t have a Ph.D in psychology like my co-author does, but when it comes to specifically just controlling your eating behavior from a big picture level related to fitness and how exercise affects it I’m one of the primary guys out there. While we were researching this book over the course of two and a half years I kind of reached a de facto Master’s level of knowledge on the subject. It’s one area that I think that trainers don’t know a lot about. I really think people should mostly be going to registered dieticians for their nutrition advice anyway, but this is good stuff for trainers to understand because it’s big picture. A good example is that a lot of people think that when they work out really hard they can reward themselves with food. This is important for trainers to be aware of and to warn people away from. That’s a theme that’s repeated endlessly throughout the book. Exercising hard does not mean that you get to reward yourself with food or else you’re basically going to lose all the good that you did. You need to do it from the perspective that exercise has empowered you to make wiser food decisions and compel you to see food as a healthy source of fuel rather than a source of indulgence or pleasure.

To read more of Fell’s writing you can find him at the following places:

• BodyforWife.com

• Facebook and Twitter