F45’s Harmful Choice to Partner with Dr. B’s
Opinion - Coach Jack Handfield Opinion - Coach Jack Handfield
Opinion - Coach Jack Handfield
For those lucky enough to be unfamiliar with F45 training. What is it? Who is Dr B? & Why do I care that they are partnering?
If you left the drive through of your local Taco Bell and the man at the window handed you some Pepto and told you “This is really going to help!” would you be concerned?
If you left the dealership in your brand new car, and the salesman hands you a business card of the “Best tow truck in town” would you be concerned?
On the surface level, F45 training is “high intensity, functional fitness performed in group classes” with the F standing for Functional & the 45 meaning the length of each class. F45 is a group fitness class similar to CrossFit, and similar to CrossFit in only that way. Daily workouts are posted, coached, and completed in 45 minutes, with the promise of HIIT training benefits and a once weekly shot of GLP-1 to keep your weight in check. F45 is expected to be an answer, or at minimum protection, to the worlds most vexing issue —Chronic Disease, yet they have partnered with a Telehealth company to SELL you their version of the solution to ending obesity, diabetes, and chronic disease in America.
Dr. B’s is a Tele-Health company that is only an aside to this piece. They are the outlet that hosts the store (F45) that sells random candles you don’t need, and similarly provides the service for doctors to meet virtually with patients to get treatment without leaving their homes. While this is great when you come down with a nasty flu, Dr. B’s potential to sell you more than just a dose of Tamiflu is far nastier. F45 training is not partnering with Dr. B’s to sell you tylenol or some lidocaine patches for your sore back, they are partnered to sell YOU GLP-1, or Ozempic/Wagovy Medications, virtually. The Tele-Health industry is becoming rich with your money, and even richer in the concerns of misdiagnosis, abusing prescriptions with faulty verification, and a lack of seeing patients physically in their office face to face.
Some quick background on GLP-1 medications
- In the 1980’s researchers discovered that GLP-1 plays an important role in regulating blood sugar
- in 1992, scientists discovered that Exendin-4, a naturally occurring GLP-1 receptor agonist, was found in Gila Monster saliva (those things are scary)
- In 2005, Exenatide became the first FDA approved GLP-1 receptor agonist medication for type 2 diabetes
- In the 2010’s improvements in the medicines were made which allowed them to be 1/2x weekly injections
- In 2021 Semaglutide was approved specifically for chronic weight management in obese individuals
- Today research continues on other benefits and side effects that GLP-1 receptor agonists and similar medicines have on humans for a variety of issues not exclusive to weight loss
Let me preface this with saying that I am not an “anti-GLP-1er”, I am not shaming the people who take it, and in no way am I anti-medicine, healthcare, or getting the help you need. What I am against is a business that promises you increased fitness and health through a Rx, instead of an Rx workout. Many Americans DO need the benefits of GLP-1 medications to help with diabetes and weight loss, but I am hard pressed to imagine anyone is interested in attending classes that provide little more than a feeling of hard work, with no substance to prove it.
The foundation of The CrossFit Pyramid of Fitness (Theoretical Hierarchy of Development) is nutrition. Nutrition is the MOST important aspect of your everyday life to not only improve your fitness, but to improve your overall health and to lengthen and strengthen your fight against chronic diseases that plague our country. There is no amount of working out that you can do in a day, that can fight against a bad diet, it is simple science. You are in the gym for approximately an hour a day, and you have 23 hours to make decisions surrounding your diet that can not only wipe out your progress, but take you 3 steps back.
This push and pull of a bad diet mixed with working out creates mental health problems, along with the physical. Nothing is more disheartening than trying your hardest in the gym, only to hop in the car and swing by the local drive thru to buy some dinner because you have been working all day and you haven’t had time to run by the grocery store— It is HARD. It does take discipline, and time, and energy, and a ton of effort. BUT it matters.
In college, I weighed over 250lbs, in high school that number was pushing 280! I had to take a hard look in the mirror and be honest with myself about why I was so overweight, yet so exhausted from the amount of working out that I was doing. My diet was atrocious, as bad as the stereotypical college kids diet you can think of, and make it 5x worse. I began to stack habits, removing one unhealthy item from my diet per week and substituting it without something better i.e. soda for seltzer water.
Eventually after about 2 months, the sugar, the candy, the ice cream was gone, and so was my weight. In one semester I went from 248lbs, to 209lbs. While working, studying, and being a D1 athlete. It was hard, and it forced me to say no to a lot of things I thought I enjoyed, but that life path and embarked on changed my life and how my brain is wired differently forever.
Admittedly, I did do F45 Training a lot in college. It was offered for somewhere around $15 a month for unlimited classes, and I felt that I needed that external motivation when I began. It was easy to supplement my current team workouts and class schedule. At the time, I was extremely naive about my personal fitness & health and I did not understand what calories in/out was, how to accurately track the calories I was burning, or how to create a proper workout. After a few months I gained trust in myself that what I was doing was giving me the results I wanted, and trusted that F45 was not the reason behind my success, because if it was F45 would have given me that knowledge.
Nutrition, health, and fitness is not a fad. It is not a temporary thing. It has no end, and you cannot stop, or the progress you have made will slowly disappear. It truly is a lifestyle, and while it is your free will and freedom that will dictate what you do, your family, friends, and community will carry the weight of the decisions you made yesterday, today and tomorrow. When you understand that there is no finish line that you can reach to stop putting in the effort to be healthy, you will understand why I believe that a weekly shot to mask your poor decisions sold to you by a gym that should help you make healthier choices, is an awful choice.
For the rest of your life you will be shouldering the weight of knowing that the shortcut you took, and spent thousands of dollars on, WILL be taken away the day you stop taking the shots. But at what point do you stop? 1 year? 5 years? 25 years? When you are 65? When you want to start a family? When you retire? You have to make lifestyle changes to change your life, and if you make those changes, you do not need a shot to do that. The facade of progress does not equate to real progress. Not to mention the long term side effects and ramifications of taking these medications being wildly unknown.
This idea that a gym/business would choose to partner with a brand to sell and advertise this medicine to its customers seems unbelievably wrong. F45’s decision to value money, over their customers health, under the vail that it is going to be responsible, and safe, and help you, is not a part of their terms and conditions, it is just a selling point for their instagram. Similar to the rhetorical questions at the beginning of the article; Are you concerned?
Not only is F45 admitting that “hey, our product that we are selling you (fitness) does not actually give you the tools, knowledge, or benefits to improve your overall health, without the outside of help of prescription medication.” but this partnership is an admittance of failure at the core of the company. The foundation is cracked, and it is sinking into the ground.
Do not give your money to F45, and fight against the notion that the only way to live is to take medication that was initially approved for people who were diabetic, not for a get skinny quick fix. For every choice you do or do not make in your life, there are consequences both good and bad. Shortcuts will not get you or your body where you want it and need it to be.
Improve your health, fitness, and knowledge about how to live a healthy life with CrossFit, specifically One Life Crossfit. We, and I, offer nutrition coaching, personal training, and group fitness training at our gym every day of the week, and we will continue to reject the notion that a weekly prescription shot is the only way to lose weight.
We care about you and we want to help.
- Coach Jack, CFL1