Fitness trends to avoid in 2025

Trends to avoid as you aim for a healthier 2025

What you probably already know: It’s the time of year when everyone is trying to eat healthier, work out more, skip the alcohol and just generally try to improve their health. An estimated 38.5% of U.S. adults set New Year’s resolutions. But these days, there are as many social media influencers spouting claims of how best to get healthy, as there are people trying to build healthier habits. So what’s real and what’s just a ploy to sell products? The New York Times took a look at a few of the more popular fads and provided some suggestions for better ways to get results.

Why? The “75 hard” challenge is the first one that fitness and mental health experts suggest should get tossed out. The trend first hit the scene a few years ago and suggests people work out twice a day for 45 minutes, stick to a strict diet, drink a gallon of water, skip alcohol, all for 75 days with no rest days and no “cheat” days from the diet. For people who don’t do regular workouts, jumping in like this can lead to injuries, and sticking to a strict diet like this can lead to disordered eating, according to experts. Essentially, this one is just not the way to build healthy habits.

What it means: Other popular trends include focusing on keeping your heart rate in zone two by doing low-intensity long workouts. There are five heart rate zones and the idea is that by keeping your heart rate in zone two, you’ll build endurance. That, experts say, might work for serious endurance athletes, but for the rest of us, it doesn’t make much sense to focus so intensely on heart rate. Experts say your heart rate varies due to many other factors, including stress and hydration, so it’s an inexact way to measure the intensity of a workout. Cold plunges are similarly popular right now. Experts seem to suggest there’s nothing wrong with them, but to temper your expectations of the benefits. If you do a cold plunge, do it because you like it, not because it is some kind of miracle cure.

What happens now? The last tip was to avoid oversharing and over-consuming social media content on fitness and health topics. The constant consumption can cause negative feelings about your own health, and make people more likely to give up or get depressed that they are not progressing as much as others. Additionally, oversharing your own fitness journey can cause some people to get fixated on the data and devices. If Strava helps you say on track because your friends are encouraging you, that’s fine. But if it becomes an obsession, that can become problematic and lead people to push themselves to the point of injury.