← Slate Money
Slate Money
The New Year’s Resolution Edition
00:44:33
The Slate Money team talks Weight Watchers, health-related wearables, and the economics of gyms.
Loading summary
Transcript199 lines
- [00:00]
A
Slate Money is brought to you by bolanbranch.com, the company that makes luxury betting affordable. Get the nicest sheets you've ever owned for about half the price of what stores and boutiques are charging. Order right now and they'll give you 50% off sheets plus free shipping. Go to bolandbranch.com that's b o l l a n d b r-a n c-h.com and use the promo code money and by taxact file simple federal and state returns for free by visiting taxact.com slate TaxAct will guide you through every step of the process using your computer, tablet or phone and get you the maximum refund guaranteed. That's taxact.com slate and by credit Karma, do not pay for your credit score with Credit Karma. You can get your credit report right now absolutely free. Just visit creditkarma.com save to get to get started. There are no strings attached and no credit card is required@creditkarma.com Save the Following podcast contains explicit language.
- [01:13]
B
Hello and welcome to the New Year's Resolutions edition of Slate Money, normally your guide to the business and finance news of the week, but this week is kind of the beginning of the year. It's the New Year's resolution time of year. I hope that all of you resolved to have more sex in 2016. I think this is the only resolution we can all get behind. Yes, we are going to talk about one of the side benefits of sex today, which is you get it's good exercise.
- [01:45]
A
Way to segue. That was brilliant.
- [01:47]
B
Wow. And we're going to talk about basically all of the other resolutions that people always break about a week and a half into the new year, like losing weight and going on diets.
- [01:58]
C
I think this episode might actually already be too late. Like, I mean, how many people out there are already breaking their resolution?
- [02:04]
A
I feel, I feel I'm halfway there.
- [02:05]
B
Yeah. So Jordan, you actually made a New Year's resolution this year?
- [02:10]
A
Well, yeah, there was, I think I talked about in the last episode. I made a half hearted resolution to try and get slightly more swole.
- [02:18]
C
I don't even know what swole is.
- [02:19]
A
Swole it means build some muscle. Got it for the first time in my life, Jordan.
- [02:23]
B
So Jordan Weissman, the Slate Money Box columnist, is good to be ripped by the end of the year.
- [02:28]
A
My game plan is already sort of veering off course and if you really want me to discuss it, we will.
- [02:33]
B
Discuss it later in the episode with Kathy o'. Neill. Hello, Kathy.
- [02:38]
C
Hey, how's it going.
- [02:39]
B
And most excitingly, very excitingly, the one and only Eleanor Trickett. Ellie, you're going to introduce yourself and then I'm going to tell everyone how wonderful you are.
- [02:47]
D
Okay, that works. I am the editor in chief of IBM.com but I'm happy to call myself a weight loss expert.
- [02:54]
B
You see, we have a genuine expert on the show today, which is good.
- [02:58]
D
I've lost an awful lot of weight over and over.
- [03:01]
B
It's easy. I've done it many times.
- [03:04]
D
But I've, you know, I've worked for Weight Watchers over the, over the years and I've helped some extremely large basketball players lose a lot of weight. So that's been kind of exciting.
- [03:12]
B
So trick it. And I go back what, like 20 years, 25 years, something like that. So, so we're just going to be.
- [03:21]
C
Anyway, since they were five years old.
- [03:23]
B
Everything what she says about being an expert on everything and generally just a fabulous person.
- [03:28]
A
Also obviously an expert on Felix Salmon. So we're going to have to take advantage of that on this episode.
- [03:34]
B
She knows things about me which no one knows about me. But yeah, I feel like we have this incredible opportunity for Kathy, who's got a whole, you know, theory about Weight Watchers, to talk to a genuine expert who knows weight watches from the inside.
- [03:50]
C
Yes. Thank you so much for this opportunity, Ellie. I'm so psyched you're here. So you know about marketing for Weight Watchers and like other commercial weight loss programs. Can you describe the perspective of the marketer? Like, what are you playing on when you, when you target people for Weight Watchers?
- [04:07]
D
Well, first of all, I wasn't a marketer for Weight Watchers, but obviously I've just observed that whole world for, you know, a long time. I was, I was a member of various diet programs before I started doing that for a living. And as anybody who's ever wanted to do anything like that, the thing is to find that key moment, to find that moment where it's, it's unfortunately nearly always a negative moment for somebody. There's a last draw event that drives them into, you know, Weight Watchers location or to download an app or to buy a book or anything like, like that. So what the market is doing, they're just hoping that they can find out what is that trigger moment. How can they invite somebody into that world in a really empathetic way and make them feel like, yeah, you know, this is something that is going to change your. And we can really make a big difference working together here and really include them because really what they're trying to do is get people to commit to the long term for something they're probably only going to stick to for a week and a half.
- [05:04]
B
So wait, when you said last straw, that's fascinating to me. Like you're basically picking people up sort of near a low point or at least a sort of local minima, a pain point.
- [05:16]
D
Yeah, well, it's interesting because actually the psychology of dieting has changed so much over the past few years. If you look at MPG that tracks eating patterns in America and various health and fitness bits of information like that, they're showing that people are less interested in talking about diet. So yeah, you still got that group of people who have that crisis moment that kind of, you know, they see a photo from the holidays that really depresses them and you know, they get full of self loathing and all that kind of stuff. But actually what's happening just as frequently, if not more now is that people are just saying, you know, I just want to get in shape, I want to get swole.
- [05:52]
C
So I was actually looking at some statistics on this exact question and one of the things that struck me and I was born in the 70s, so I'm a child of the real dieting revolution. But back in 1992, 35% of people were on a diet, women specifically. Now it's 23, so it's gone down a lot. At the same time though, now 77% of people are trying to eat healthy, whatever that means to them. So I think it's become less of a formal, like I go to someone else and I pay them monthly for some program and more of an informal thing that may or may not include.
- [06:26]
B
Gluten free formal things. So this is where I want to jump in and start saying something which, you know, even Tricket doesn't know about me, which is that on Thanksgiving I went round to a friend's place for dinner and she was raving about this app. And because I love, you know, toys on my phone, I said, I'll download that app. And so since Thanksgiving I've been on this app called Rise, where you basically tell them what you've eaten or you can just take a photograph of it. If you're the kind of person who takes photographs of your food, which is probably better because they can see it. But I always find that a little bit weird taking photographs of my food and, and then you just get someone to sort of say, oh yeah, that's really healthy, that's awesome. And it was done on A sort of spur of the moment basis at Thanksgiving. And I don't know how long I'm gonna continue doing it for, but it certainly wasn't a pain point for me. It wasn't like me feeling, oh my God, you know, my life is dreadful, I need to eat more. It's exactly what Kathy's saying. Like 77% of people, including I'm sure all of us, are like, yeah, we want to eat more plants, eat less bad stuff, you know, that kind of thing.
- [07:32]
A
I wonder how much of this is also just the fact that there's been this, you know, you hear constantly, dieting doesn't work, dieting doesn't work in the media. And so how much is just rebranding of dieting saying, okay, well we dieting doesn't work. We have to think to call this something else.
- [07:45]
D
Essentially, it's a little bit of a chicken and egg thing. Just because the way that people have been talking about it has led to more of a marketing message that focuses on the getting in shape, feeling better. People are just eating differently. People are going to organic and gluten free and there's a halo of weight loss around that. Even though, you know, physiologically that's not necessarily going to happen.
- [08:06]
A
Yeah, organic pork belly is still pork belly.
- [08:08]
D
Exactly, exactly.
- [08:09]
C
Well, let's go to that diets don't work thing, because this is a pet peeve with me as a, as a dieter in the past and as a data person, because you find so many, so many studies that answer the question you're not asking, and the question you're not asking is, can you lose weight in three or four months or six months or even a year following Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig or nutrisystems, which are the three biggest ones? Very few of them answer the question you're trying to ask, which is three or four years down the road, am I still gonna have lost weight? And the only study I can find on that actually was from 1959 and it said literally 2% of people keep the weight off after two years. What's fascinating to me is how so many people don't think about two years. They only think six months or one year. Is that because they don't want to think long term about their life? Or is that because the people, the marketers or whatever, the people doing this who own this stuff, only put those facts in front of them and make them focus on those short term goals? Look, it's.
- [09:11]
D
Dieting is hard. Nobody wants to have to budget their enjoyment. You know, Food and, and not working out all the time at the gym is, you know, it's a very emotive subject for a lot of people. And there are behavior chains that develop over time and that reinforce themselves over time. So to effect a long term behavior change that's going to lead to weight loss in two years, sustained over two to five to 10 years, requires so many neural pathways to be remapped that it's just overwhelming. I mean, the thing that you've got to do when you've got somebody starting any kind of weight loss thing, you've just got to get them through that first week. And once they've gotten through that first week, you need to get them through whether the result was positive or negative on the scale. And you need to then take that information and encourage them to keep going if it's negative and to push them and say, this is working for you if it's positive. These critical moments happen. If somebody fails, if somebody gains, they can drop off right now and that's it, that's. That's it for another year. They're not going to try for another long term. Thinking is hard.
- [10:17]
B
So I feel like the only thing which really works over the long term is exactly what you're saying is you're like remapping neural pathways that you move from sort of system one to system two in the, in the Daniel Kahneman sense of things that you stop thinking about it and it just becomes a. Yes, a habit. And that the best way to do that is basically just to have rules which you're not imposing on yourself for the sake of dieting. So, you know, if someone says, like, I like baby animals and therefore I'm going to become a vegetarian, and then like, being a vegetarian helps them eat less pork belly, you know, that's a good way of eating less pork belly. Or if someone says, I, you know, have seen people ruin their life with alcohol, so I'm not going to drink alcohol, that means they drink less alcohol. That's also a good way of losing weight, you know, and it's not as part of a diet or it's just a very simple rule which you can automatically live your entire life by. And it also helps you get healthier.
- [11:15]
C
Yeah. So, yeah, I don't want to echo that. I listened to a podcast called Inquiring Mind. So for you podcast listeners, check this.
- [11:22]
B
Out just in case anyone listening to this podcast happens to be the podcast listener.
- [11:27]
C
And they did an interview with Tracy Mann, who wrote a book called Secrets from the Eating Lab. And she was super interesting. She talked all about why diets don't work, why willpower is misunderstood. But her sort of, like, bottom line was. Along the lines what you just said, Felix. Basically, she said it's not really neural pathways for her. It's more like environment. Like, make it hard for yourself to eat badly. So instead of when we talk about pork bellies, if you want to avoid pork bellies, okay, you could become vegetarian. That's a drastic way of doing it. Another way of doing it is just never put it on your fresh direct or make the candy in a locked cupboard that you know where the key is. But you'd have to go get the key and then unlock the. You'd have to sort of kind of say to the world and to yourself, I am doing this instead of letting yourself just have it on the kitchen counter, which is like, the worst place to put candy.
- [12:14]
D
I saw one study that shows that you can reduce chocolate consumption almost to zero in a student cafeteria.
- [12:20]
B
That sounds horrible.
- [12:21]
D
By requiring people to line up for it separately from their main course.
- [12:25]
C
And another thing she did along those lines is she gave cups of vegetables and fruits to kids while they're waiting in line for their lunches. And they ate them. Otherwise, they would basically never eat them. They also ate less of their other food in their lunch.
- [12:40]
B
So I'm definitely a salad second person. I want to eat that, like, you know, fatty, salty lasagna. If I have a plate with a fatty, salty thing and some salad on the side, I'm going to eat the carbs.
- [12:51]
C
Well, everyone is, it turns out after six months anyway.
- [12:55]
B
But there's also. I want to move on to gadgets, because this is where I get excited. But before we move on to gadgets, I need to talk about ball and branch, which is sheets, which is not a gadget. But sheets are just like. They're the best sheets, and they're the best sheets, and they're the cheapest sheets, and they're super organic. Even though that won't help you lose weight, it will make you sleep better. And they get nice and soft. This is the one trick you have to go to BollandBranch.com you're gonna get these sheets for 30 days. If you don't love them, you're gonna send them back. But the trick is you wash them, like, two or three times over the course of those 30 days. And the more you wash them, the softer they get, the more comfortable to get they get. You will sleep well at night, not just because you have great sheets, but because they're all ethically made and people are well treated and all the rest of it. So bolandbranch.com is where you get these sheets. They're the best sheets in the world. B O l l and branch.com and then use the promo code money and you get 20 off everything you buy. So there you go. Bowl and branch. Trick it.
- [14:01]
D
Salmon.
- [14:03]
B
Actually, we're both wearing gadgets on our wrist. You have a very high tech looking gadget. I have a gadget which looks like a watch, but they're both watches. But they do other things as well. Why are we wearing gadgets on our wrists?
- [14:15]
D
We are gadgeted up the wazoo, Felix. I have my Garmin vivoactive, which is a smartwatch.
- [14:22]
B
You have your Withings activity.
- [14:25]
D
Absolutely. I also have about 17 apps on my phone that track absolutely everything that I do. When I go for a run with my friend Brianna, it takes us about 10 minutes to get started.
- [14:35]
A
I've had nearly knockdown, drag out fights with my wife about that specific phenomenon where I just want to start running and she's just like, nope, nope, you.
- [14:42]
D
Gotta get the GPS signal.
- [14:44]
A
Yeah, I gotta get the signal.
- [14:46]
B
Okay, so why are you doing this? And is. Yeah, why are you doing this? So why are we doing this?
- [14:53]
D
Well, we talked a little earlier about the fact that weight loss isn't about wanting to lose weight. It's people are more about wanting to be healthier, get in shape, all that kind of stuff. And you know, tracking what you're doing gives you some kind of pride when you're trying to get healthy. A lot of it is about subtracting things from your life. It's how many calories did I slice from my day, how, how much didn't I eat, how much weight have I lost? It's all very reductive, but with something like these devices, you're building things up and there's a really big psychological BO when you're actually adding to a total and you're outperforming yourself from the day before. The social aspect is also really key to being healthy if you're competing with people. You know, people talk about the gamification that weight loss apps and fitness apps do provide. It's a very motivating factor that bragging rights are fantastic. Social connectivity.
- [15:41]
B
It's amazing how good it feels when I write. When I walk 20,000 steps in a day, I'm like, Whoa, I went 20,000 steps today. That's amazing.
- [15:49]
C
You know, it reminds me of, we've talked about the lottery a lot on this show. And why do people buy lottery tickets even when they know in expectation they're going to lose quite a bit? Almost entirely it's, you're buying a dream, you're buying a vision of yourself and your future. And I feel like all of these things, even though, I mean, Fitbits or whatever kind of smartwatches you guys get, it probably fades very quickly. You probably spend a lot of money and then two months later, maybe not you two, you guys are looking at me like, not me, but other people often just buy it and then they have a great time for the first couple months and then they fade out. But it was still worth it to them.
- [16:25]
B
I mean, the Fitbit app was the number one downloaded app in the App Store the day after Christmas because everyone got given one of these things for Christmas. And if you're given one of these things, you're like, okay, I guess I download the app and now what do I do? But what I like about my watch, I'll give a little plug for the Withings activity here is it's a watch and it looks like a watch and the, you know, it acts like a watch and you change the battery every eight months and that's basically what it does. But then if you want, you can just look at this little dial which tells you how many steps you've taken today. And that's just a nice little, little baby thing reminding you to, hey, you know, if you haven't been active at all today, to maybe go out and, you know, walk home instead of taking the subway or something like that. And you, and you can totally ignore it for as long as you like. But then the other great thing about it is that you have a bunch of data going back a long time if you need it. So the other little Withings device I have, and this goes back to what I was saying about getting into habits, is a scale. And you do get one of those little sort of dopamine rushes. But one of the things they do on the scale is they'll just give you, they'll tell you your weight and then they'll tell you, they'll show you a little graph of your weight over time, whether it's up or down from the last time you weighed yourself. And every time it goes down you go yay. And if it goes up, it goes sad. And that's kind of cute. But what it does is it makes it really, really easy to just be able to go back and see long term trends and they show you the moving average and that's what matters.
- [17:53]
D
That's very. Basics, though. I mean, we're at a really early.
- [17:57]
A
What a negative.
- [17:58]
D
Really early phase, a really early stage of what these devices are doing. I mean, you're getting. You're getting, you know, directional data over time, you're getting behaviors reinforced, which is great. But where these things are really going to get very interesting is when they start combining data from various different.
- [18:16]
B
All right, tricky. Get your IBM plug in.
- [18:18]
D
All right, so this is it. So I was actually invited onto this podcast before, before IBM announced its partnership with Under Armour at CES last week. But it's really interesting to me because Under Armour, you know, we always knew it as an apparel company, but they've made a lot of acquisitions over the year that's given them Basically, I think, 160 million people who are generating data.
- [18:42]
B
And the big one is my fitness.
- [18:43]
D
My fitness, pal. So map my fitness, which is all about my run, map my ride, etc. So they've got all of this data that's coming in from. From that, and they're using IBM Watson, which a cognitive computing platform that takes data and it learns from it. It's machine learning. And the other inputs that it can use are behavioral data. So the time of day that people manually track in an app, the number of days in a week. I mean, my, my theory about these things, that you've got all these apps that have fantastic data for a single person for maybe two and a half days at a time, and then a week's worth of breakfast and then nothing for another ten and a half months. But then you've got that combined with environmental data, weather, for example, all of these things are feeding. Are going to be feeding into this app, which is you. A record, or is it record? And it's going to actually start prescribing behaviors for people that are going to, again, kind of build those behavior chains that are going to work for them over the longer term.
- [19:39]
C
Sorry, as a data person, I have to interrupt here. Does that mean that MyFitnessPal and all those other things that you're uploading your personal data to is being used by other. By IBM?
- [19:50]
B
Yeah, it's all aggregated. And then they're using the aggregate data to say, like, what do people like you do? And what's the best way to sort of nudge you into doing better things?
- [20:00]
C
Okay. I mean, I have a. I'm skeptical. I'll just put it there.
- [20:03]
B
Okay. Why are you skeptical?
- [20:04]
C
No, I'm skeptical because, first of all, it's hugely selected as we just talked about, people turn off this stuff when they're not behaving well, quote unquote. And second of all, the kind of prescriptions you're probably going to get is go running every day and eat well. Like, what are we expecting? Beyond the obvious, I guess, you know.
- [20:24]
D
I actually, I don't know enough about how they're going to be developing over time, but I think a lot of that is actually going to be defined by the inputs that they get from users. And again, I think a lot of it is just about the power of these nudges rather than kind of a long term plan. It's going to be things like there are X number of other people in this area who are doing the these types of activities. And then you're kind of activating that competition part in the brain that says, you know, I want to be a part of that, I want to add to that data.
- [20:55]
A
So I kind of have a broad question and maybe I should have looked up an answer to this before we started. But I'm wondering, has there been any kind of thorough research at this point on whether or not these apps or people who use these apps do better on dieting and fitness than people who don't like that?
- [21:11]
B
These actually have an effect Anecdotally, I think the one I know about is Strava, the bicycling app.
- [21:19]
A
Yeah.
- [21:19]
B
And you get routes and you get to see exactly how fast everyone else has ridden that route and you get to see how fast you've ridden that route in the past and you get to beat yourself and you get to compete with other people. And once you get into that Strava community, it just becomes completely addictive.
- [21:37]
C
But I'm gonna jump in again, self selection there. As a data person and as a biker. I'm a pretty serious biker. I mean, not hugely hardcore, but that would be a next level for me. Which is to say that it's already selecting for people who are pretty hardcore bikers. Right?
- [21:53]
A
Yeah. Like I'm wondering about like the guys like me who like, you know, download six pack abs or whatever or like, you know, runkeeper, which is, it's a very basic level app and they do a lot of volume. I'm wondering about the typical user.
- [22:05]
C
What you'd really like to see is a randomized control. Not exactly people who download this app, are they healthy? Yes, they are. The question is like randomly select people to give them these biking apps. Half of them aren't going to even bike, so you're going to have to Think about that. But, you know, will the people who happen to get. Might not have otherwise happened to get these apps actually improve from a broader point of view?
- [22:24]
D
Going back to your original question, Jordan, how do these work for people? There's a very overarching principle in behavioral weight loss psychology, which is the act of tracking, recording your activities and what you're doing and eating is the number one indicator for weight loss. And anybody program should be predicated upon that. And so any kind of engagement, any kind of interaction that you have with an app is already going to predispose you to successful weight loss. The thing is, it's hard. It's really hard. And with activity, it's not so difficult because, you know, you've got things that are tracking your movements and, and again, it's a positive thing to track steps. Where it gets really, really hard is things like having to write down what you eat. And one of the things, again, this is something that the Under Armour Record app is going to be able to do is to actually look at a of food and using the Watson visual recognition technology, start making pretty good guesses over time about how many calories is in that item of food. That's one of the things that people drop off doing most quickly more than anything else, because it's a pain in the ass to write down what you're eating. It's weird, it's unnatural, and often it can be shameful. So any kind of interaction with any kind of app is going to contribute to that kind of success at a really high level.
- [23:42]
C
I'm just sorry to interrupt again, but I do feel like there's a little bit of backwards thinking at least. I'm not convinced that that's the way to think about it. What we should be thinking of is if you're into it. If you're already into it, then you're more likely to write stuff down. It's not that if you write stuff down, you get more into it.
- [23:56]
B
No, I think, I mean, personally, I can tell you that just having tiny little daily reminders of, like, you get into the habit, as I say, of just stepping on a scale or of looking at your watch and seeing how many steps you've taken today or something like that. As Ellie says, those tiny little daily interactions are a good indicator of, like, you're on the right path and just doing that is a good thing and what you're saying as well. People who are predisposed to be, like, awesome at being fit and losing weight are more likely to do that, I think. That actually there's some there there that like, just speaking personally, I'm not particularly predisposed to anything and Tricket can certainly like back me up on this, but having that just tiny little daily data points coming at me just, just by looking at my watch makes a difference, right?
- [24:49]
C
No, I like the watch thing because it is like a nudge, it's on your arm that's a little different from opening up an app and putting in the food.
- [24:56]
A
Sure. I would say also that there's, there's something to be said for helping people who already kind of want to lose weight and are somewhat predisposed to it do it more effectively. Just because, you know, you're talking about people who are predisposed, it doesn't mean it's useless. And I think I also what that effect is.
- [25:10]
C
I don't want to be a total skeptic. I also really like Ellie's perspective point about competition and social connection.
- [25:16]
B
Okay, so this is my segue because the hot thing in fitness right now is this whole competition. SoulCycle does it. Peloton does it. We're going to talk about that next on Slate Money. I feel like I want to. I'm trying to turn this into some kind of podcast, which it never has been by Philadelphia. Yes.
- [25:38]
A
Can we just do like an in on the war in a world.
- [25:40]
B
In a world where. In a world where people go to bicycling studios and compete against each other on stationary carbon fiber bikes. But before we talk about that, I'm going to talk about tax acts because they are also a sponsor this week. So this is the time of year when you start getting your 1099s and you fill out your. And if you have a tax refund coming, people, you can get it now. You don't need to wait until April. You can get that money now because all of the money you made last year has now been made. So just fill out your tax return, get your tax refund. And the way you fill out your tax return, if you have something simple in terms of federal and state returns, you just go to taxact.com and you fill them out for free. It's easy to use. It guides you through every step of the process. You can use it on your phone. You don't even need a computer. Just go to taxact.com slate and you get all of your simple federal and state returns for free. Taxact.com slate okay. Peloton fascinates me.
- [26:42]
C
What is Peloton? I've never heard of it.
- [26:44]
B
Ellie, you want to explain what peloton is.
- [26:46]
D
So it's a spinning studio. But the model is interesting in that you have a place where you can go and you can get on a peloton bike and do a peloton class and sip your peloton water. But you can also buy a peloton bike and take it home and they can like they'll live stream classes. You can also do it on demand and you still have that competition.
- [27:08]
C
It's like a stationary bike. It's just.
- [27:10]
D
Yes.
- [27:11]
B
And the thing which abs which I find absolutely hilarious is that it's a carbon fiber stationary bike because it's so important that stationary bikes being lightweight.
- [27:21]
D
But it's interesting because it plays to that issue of convenience. People again, people will find it very easy to find an excuse not to not to eat the right thing, not to go to their spinning class. And convenience is a massive factor.
- [27:34]
B
So you can just put this bike like basically it's the first sort of web enabled home exercise piece of kit and you get on there and there's this screen and you're literally competing against often people that you know. This is one of the good things about Fitbit as well. If you're competing against your friends to who can, who can walk the most, you sign up for the classes. Soul Cycle I think is very popular precisely because it's a competition people. There's a large number of people who love competition.
- [28:01]
A
Question does peloton, I'm assuming that you're paying for a subscription for the streaming or does it all come packaged with the bike that you buy? Or are you. Do you get a membership? Because is that also just sounds like a far better business than running a gym because you know, the number one cost of running a gym is real estate. So if you can just sell someone a bike and then have them pay a membership to have, you know, instructor yell at them over the Internet. That, that, that is a far, far better, more scalable model than you know, Crunch or soulcycle or whatever.
- [28:32]
D
You've got peloton stores in fancy malls. You know, it's not a spinning studio, it's actually a store.
- [28:37]
C
Is there still a fancy mall in the universe?
- [28:41]
D
I think there's no.
- [28:41]
A
There are only fancy malls there. You have like the time went to.
- [28:44]
C
A dead mall the other day.
- [28:44]
A
Yeah, no, like regular malls are gone, but it's like Time Warner center.
- [28:47]
C
That's quite gone unfortunately. Question. So could I take a peloton stationary bike if it's too cold for me to actually go to Central Park? Is that the kind of thing do you guys, like, get to see? Do you get to choose your path or does it.
- [28:59]
B
No, I think you see the instructor, don't you? Yeah, I think it's all, like. It's a spin class.
- [29:04]
C
Got it.
- [29:05]
B
And. And you.
- [29:06]
C
That's not as attractive. I'm sorry. I'm, like, depending on the instructor, I suppose.
- [29:10]
A
Come on.
- [29:13]
B
There are people. So I got. We. I fell into a bit of a soul cycle Internet rabbit hole this week because. Because Chelsea Clinton is doing a fundraiser at SoulCycle, and if you pay $2,700, you get to be in Chelsea's pack in the SoulCycle class. And there are all of these people in this slack room at Fusion who are talking about their favorite soul cycle instructors and how they're like gurus, basically, you know, and they're like lifestyle gurus, and you go to them for reaching some kind of state of nirvana. I don't quite understand it, but there's this whole spiritual aspect to it, which I.
- [29:56]
C
Is it like a cult?
- [29:57]
B
Yes.
- [29:58]
D
Actually, Target has just this week announced that they're coming out with a soul cycle line of clothes, which is just such a bizarre partnership. And, you know.
- [30:07]
A
Well, I mean, that's how for a national. For a exercise company or a gym company to go national, they kind of have to become a cult. Right. If you think about, like, that actually is the name of the game, because there's not a ton of economy to scale with gyms. Each individual gym still needs trainers, still needs space, still needs someone to manage it. The only real advantage is branding. Everyone knows your product. And so if you are a national cult, that is basically. That is what you're aiming for. It is the only way you're going to come and kind of dominate the business.
- [30:40]
C
Can we talk about the business of gyms for a second? I've been a member of seven or eight gyms in my lifetime, and the only thing I noticed in common with them because all sorts of prices up to like $150 a month to 25. The one commonality is what I call the New Year's Resolution Bump, which ends exactly every year. And this is my theory. Test me if I'm wrong. Exactly. On Valentine's Day.
- [31:07]
B
It doesn't even last.
- [31:10]
C
That is the official death of the New Year's Resolution Bump. It's the day when people are like, they either got a date or they didn't. And either way, they're not ever going to the gym again.
- [31:18]
A
It's make or break. Well, yeah, that's But I mean, let's.
- [31:19]
C
Face it, you said it's all about real estate. They don't really actually have to have a very big gym because almost nobody.
- [31:25]
B
Ever shows up, except for in January. It needs to be big enough to cope with the January crowd. That's it.
- [31:31]
A
And that is the name of the game. It's. They're trying to get more memberships during like sweaty January than they can actually hold in the gym.
- [31:38]
C
It's uncomfortably tight in January. And then after that it's fine.
- [31:41]
A
And they know that after that it's gonna thin out, but people will still keep paying their dues and therefore that's their meal ticket for the year. And I mean, if you do keep using the gym, it's nice because you're being subsidized by all those other people who stopped working.
- [31:53]
C
But speaking of subsidized, you're also often being subsidized by your work. There's all sorts of money, if you want to talk about the economics of it, like money that goes into gyms, maybe even from your health plans. Right. Doesn't that sometimes happen?
- [32:05]
D
Yeah, I mean, health plans of incentivizing fitness in a big way. And you know, employers are. Health plans are giving out fitness devices and actually on people on a certain health plan, IBM are getting an Apple Watch to use a new app that. Another cognitive app that's been developed called Cafe World Concierge. But again, health insurers are making it as easy as possible for people to be active because it's going to keep their premiums down. And.
- [32:33]
C
Yeah, but one interesting thing is that as far as I understand, Obamacare doesn't cover weight loss programs. So maybe this is another reason that this.
- [32:42]
B
Well, that's because they don't work. Right?
- [32:43]
C
Well, they don't work, but I'm just saying that might be the reason, one of the reasons that the gyms and the Fitbits of the world gyms don't work either.
- [32:50]
B
As we've just.
- [32:51]
C
They don't work, but for some reason we pay for them.
- [32:53]
B
But no, but they do make you healthier if you go to them.
- [32:57]
C
Well, if you go to them.
- [32:58]
B
So one of. So I wanna go back to Jordan's idea of cultishness because one of the thing. We got a great email after we teased this episode last week.
- [33:10]
A
I actually have it up. Do you want me to read it? Yes.
- [33:12]
B
So let's talk about yoga, which is the classic exercise cult.
- [33:15]
A
Yeah, so. Very much so. So it's Dear Felix, Kathy and Jordan, what is the Economics of yoga STUDIOS from the point of view of a customer, I'd like a studio with lots of teachers at different times the day. So I have a choice both as to teacher and time. But in fact, many studios are owner run and barely have any other teachers than the owner. Whatever other teachers they have are poorly paid and very transient. It seems pretty clear you can't make any money as a yoga teacher unless you run your own studio. But that makes for way too many studios with too few class options. Why is this?
- [33:46]
C
I have a theory.
- [33:46]
B
What's your theory, Kathy?
- [33:48]
C
I mean, as to why yoga teachers are paid so poorly. It's the Etsy effect. We talked about this when we talked about the economics of Etsy, which is that people who are really into yoga are doing it as a hobby and they're willing to teach a class as part of that, but they're basically undervaluing their own skills and they're selling themselves short.
- [34:07]
A
I can confirm that one of the reasons people are paid so little to do yoga are actually people like my wife. My wife is a prosecutor, as I've talked about on the show, but also is a certified yoga teacher. She hasn't taught in some years, but she is certified. When she was a clerk in dc, she went through one of the training programs and, and her whole class, everyone in it, by the end of several months was, even if they were only doing as a hobby, was totally qualified in the eyes of the yoga community to go teach, you know, many, many classes. At her first class she had like 20 people there. And as a result you have a lot of amateurs and that drives down prices for people who are just beginning. And this is actually the same effect you see for personal trainers. It's very, very low. I mean, it's actually even lower certification standards for personal trainers. Guys who are trying to help you get swole, they don't really need to know that much. And so you have that. You just have a huge pool of labor to pick from. It makes it difficult.
- [35:00]
D
There's another element which is you'll find a lot of people who are paid to give health and fitness advice as a coach, as a trainer, as, you know, somebody working for a weight loss company, for example, who are not paid very much money. But they're in it for the accountability because a lot of the time they've made really big lifestyle changes themselves, they've lost a lot of weight, they've gone from couch potato to marathoner, and these jobs help reinforce the behavior that got them there in the first place. They become accountable to them and it keeps them there.
- [35:28]
C
That makes me wonder how bad this advice is. Like if the bar is that low for yoga teachers, personal trainers and God forbid, nutritional advice people.
- [35:37]
B
Oh my God, nutritionists are the worst.
- [35:39]
C
They're the worst.
- [35:39]
B
But I feel that like, as Ellie was saying, the most important thing is just to exist. Like if you have a personal trainer and you go and see a personal trainer once or twice a week, that in and of itself is going to be a good thing. Even if they're not giving you amazing.
- [35:56]
A
Well, you might get hurt.
- [35:57]
C
Well, they get really bad advice for that stuff. You can really hurt yourself.
- [36:00]
B
Yeah, you can get. And that's what's the thing. CrossFit. What? You said CrossFit.
- [36:03]
A
Yeah, exactly. I mean, you have a lot of people who might never or have actually, even if they have a degree, they might not actually know proper form for some of the stuff they're teaching you.
- [36:10]
B
I just feel that the assumption in the email that the only way to make money is to own your own studio, I think this is, is narrowly true, that if you find any, anyone in the yoga teaching world who's making money, they're going to own their own studio. But I think broadly it's like opening a restaurant. I think most people who open yoga studios end up losing money.
- [36:31]
A
Oh, that's true. I actually have a friend, I was just talking with a friend who runs a Yoga Studio in D.C. and it's, I mean, it's a tournament system for everyone. It's a tournament system for the teachers. A few manage to rise up to the point where they're getting $150 a class. They're starting off, you're thinking more like 25, 35 for an hour of your time pre tax and you have to probably hop from studio to studio and then for the studios themselves, they have to attract enough customers to actually survive and then hope they don't get big footed now by one of the national chains.
- [37:02]
C
How do you get to be a good yoga studio teacher? I mean, who makes you a good teacher?
- [37:07]
B
Is it Yelp people just talk about YouTube friendly people.
- [37:10]
A
It used to be word of mouth and now you're starting to see these national chains form that. It's the branding and they come to cities and they find the most popular teachers and throw a lot of money at them. So it's a combination of that in New York.
- [37:21]
B
It's also where do the models go? If you have a lot of models in your class, then that makes you like a hot Yoga teacher. And everyone wants to be in that class.
- [37:30]
A
Have you gone to a class with a lot of models in it? Felix, he sounds like he knows his experience. Is that your class?
- [37:38]
B
So, yes, we all have fitness related numbers this week.
- [37:43]
C
Yes.
- [37:44]
B
Okay, work with me here.
- [37:46]
C
Okay? I'm always working with you.
- [37:47]
B
But the other resolution which people make is that I'm gonna finally get my finances in shape and I'm going to budget and I'm going to improve my credit score. Well, if you need an app to get your fitness in shape, you can get an app to eliminate. Least keep an eye on your credit score. It's called credit karma. And the good thing about credit karma is it's free. As opposed to all of those other places which will sell you your credit score. Why would you pay for it when you can get it for free@credit karma.com so if you go to credit karma.com save right now, you'll get a free report. They're not even going to ask you for a credit card or anything. It's 100% totally free and it will give you not only your credit report, but also your credit credit score, which is not actually easy to find.
- [38:33]
C
No, it's not.
- [38:33]
B
So go there, do that. It's a great little app and you can get it Apple, Android. So go to creditkarma.com save numbers.
- [38:45]
C
80%.
- [38:46]
B
What's that?
- [38:47]
C
Well, I've always been fascinated by supplements.
- [38:51]
B
Okay.
- [38:51]
C
You know, like your echinacea pills or whatever it is. And I was very pleased because I've always been sort of skeptical of them. I'm very pleased to find out that the New York State Attorney General's Office has accused four large companies that make supplements, Walmart, Walgreens, Target, and GNC of fraudulent supplements. The ingredients are fraudulent. A full 80% of those things that are sold have absolutely none of the thing that they're advertised in the pills. 80%. And then the last 20% presumably has a trace amount of echinacea or what have you, like green tea or whatever it is that's the oxidizing force inside the pill. 80%.
- [39:34]
A
Wow, I missed the boat that this week our numbers were also supposed to be themed. So mine is gonna be counter programming, I guess. Yeah, mine's counter programming.
- [39:44]
B
Oh, do try to keep up, Jordan.
- [39:46]
A
Yeah, I know. Come on. It wouldn't be a show if I didn't mess something up. So. So my number is 29. As in the 29 minutes that China's stock markets managed to stay open on Thursday. They have Debuted this new circuit breaker system which is supposed to bring a little bit more calm to the markets. However, it seems to be doing exactly the opposite. When stocks fall by more than 5%, they're supposed to take a 15 minute break so everyone can take a breath and assess their lives and their investment strategies. And then if it falls by 7%, they still stop trading for the day. So supposed to stop huge swings. The problem is that now because of the circuit breakers, everyone's rushing just to sell before the circuit breaker hits and they get stuck.
- [40:26]
B
But they solved this on Friday. On Friday they said, we aren't going to have any circuit breakers. We're not going to do that. And then stocks went up.
- [40:32]
A
Yeah, I mean like.
- [40:34]
B
So the answer to this problem is obviously that circuit breakers are a bit like portfolio insurance, which caused the 1987 stock market crash. That the things which are meant to make things safer only make them more dangerous. If you want to listen to the entire podcast episode we did on this subject with Greg ip, I can send you back into the archive somewhere. Trick it.
- [40:53]
D
My number is one.
- [40:54]
B
Oh, good number.
- [40:56]
D
Yes, it's in. As in how many billion gigabytes of health related data the average person is projected to generate in their lifetime. So that's the way.
- [41:05]
B
A billion gigabytes. I don't even know. I mean, Kathy, can you explain what a billion gigabytes is? It's so much bigger than I can possibly imagine.
- [41:13]
C
Is it like a. It's at a terabyte. I'm so bad with these things. But it's a long.
- [41:17]
B
It seems like an insane amount of data.
- [41:19]
D
Numbers, not so much my thing, but it seems to be, yes, rather a large amount because that's coming from wearable fitness devices, electronic health records, which of course is another massive pot of data and mobile apps. But there's also another use for the number one, which is to keep us all in perspective here. It's the average number of pounds people gain over the holiday period. Just one pound.
- [41:45]
C
Well, that's not that bad. I'll take it.
- [41:49]
B
So my number is 505. And this is a number which comes from the USDA, which has been tracking how many calories people eat per day going back to 1970. And in 1970, people consumed on average 2,039 calories per day. By 2010, which is 40 years later, that had gone up by 505 calories to 2,544 calories per day. We've basically seen a 25% increase in the number of calories that Americans consume.
- [42:31]
C
Each year is that American adults.
- [42:32]
B
American adults.
- [42:33]
C
So it's not a demographic like we have less children now or something.
- [42:37]
B
Apples to apples.
- [42:38]
C
You know, actually, 2000 doesn't sound like very many calories.
- [42:41]
B
Well, in 1970, we were getting along just fine, and now we're all.
- [42:44]
D
Yeah. I think it's important to note that I think at some point you said, you said consume, but you also said eat. And I think we need to remember that drink is a big factor in that.
- [42:52]
C
Oh, yeah.
- [42:53]
B
No, no. I'm, I'm 100% convinced that red wine has no calories. And I'm. No one can persuade me otherwise.
- [43:00]
A
Explains Felix's hand.
- [43:02]
C
I just, I want to end this on a positive note, which is that along with everyone getting super fat over the last few decades, opinions about what is attractive has all have also changed a lot. Which is nice in the sense that more people think that, that it's still attractive to be overweight. More and more people.
- [43:19]
B
Okay, that's it. On which. So if you can't get thin, at least just become a fat sex symbol. Which I'm all in. All in favor of.
- [43:29]
A
Is that PC? Oh, man, we're going to get so much. Don't let us do it. Don't let it. I'm all about the Double X podcast is going to have so much to say about the end of this episode.
- [43:39]
B
Yes. So thank you for listening to the New Year's Resolution edition of Slate Money. Thanks to Jordan Weissman and to Cathy o' Neill and to Zach Dynastine, who produced it, and to Andy Bowers, who's the executive producer. But most of all, thanks to Eleanor Trickett, the one and only, for actually knowing what she's talking about, which is a rare and special thing on this show. We will be back next week with another special guest, but for the time being, check out all of the other panel podcasts@itunes.com panoply and we'll talk to you next week on Slate Money.