Can’t Buy Me Health, But Women Try To

A majority of women is willing to spend loads of money on diet and fitness, even when they don’t believe it makes a difference!

So Many Resolutions!

I just came across an interesting survey conducted by Influence Central, a company devoted to telling other companies what we want and how to make the most money out of that.

They asked women of all ages and social backgrounds if they made any New Year’s resolutions and, if yes, how they planned putting them into reality.

59% of women said yes, they had made resolutions. Of those, 85% were confident they’ll reach them, with the top goals getting fitter and losing weight (43% each) and eating healthier (42%).

So far, so boring. But if we believe the survey that’s a lot of women and they’re willing to part with a lot of cash even when they believe it won’t do a thing!

Millions Will Be Healthy (Or Not)!

Let’s do a little math: the US Census Bureau estimates that in 2015, 320,111,681 people live in the United States. Half of them are female, so that’s around 160 million women.

If 59% of them made New Year’s resolutions that’s 94.4 million, and if 43% of those want to lose weight that’s 40,592,000.

Finally (I’m really taking this to the bitter end), if 85% of the 40.6 million believe they’ll reach their weight loss goals this year, the US by the end of 2015 should see 34,530,200 more women who are healthy, fit and of normal weight.

I may be a natural pessimist, but I doubt that.

14 Billion Dollars: Down The Drain?

But what first got me interested in this poll was how those women plan to reach their New Year’s goals:

• 68% say they’ll spend at least $500 to reach them
• 54% believe that this will cover the year
• 21% that the money will only last three months

Once more some math: 68% of 94.4 million means 63.9 million women willing to spend $500 or more on their goals. Of those, 27.5 million (the 43%) will do it to lose weight. If each of them spends at least those $500 that’s 13.7 billion dollars a gleeful health and diet industry can look forward to.

51% of women believe money can’t fix this, but are willing to pay anyway.

The funny thing is that less than half of these women (49%) was confident that all that money will make a difference.

And how do those 21% think they’ll be getting through to their goals the other nine months, if they believe spending all that money on them is necessary, but run out of it in March?

Health Is Free, Ladies!

28% of women with New Year’s resolutions planned to “take charge of their finances.” It was the fourth most popular goal of the new year. One may wonder how big the intersection is between them and those willing to spend all that money on fitness and weight loss.

Maybe the 28% are the ones who realized that the basic principle of weight loss is free and that getting fit requires buying nothing.

Before I get accused of singling out women for gullibility and heartbreaking naiveté: that’s how the survey was conducted. They only polled women. Given the crap many men into weight training buy, they are as stupid and just buy different stupid stuff.

Pictures courtesy of “lululemon” and Tony Alter.