The End of an Era

Body for Wife is no more

It is the end of an era. Body for Wife is no more.

CW: I’m gonna talk about weight loss a bit, because I was a fitness guy in a former life. If you don’t like that stuff, please stop reading now.

I became a fitness writer because I wanted to write full-time. I was a marketroid with an MBA who didn’t like my job, and my marketing analysis determined I could make a living at writing about fitness, as opposed to, say, writing science fiction. I was correct, and within a year of first being published in a local magazine I was the fitness columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

My website was BodyForWife dot com. There is a story there.

In 1993 I was a recent university graduate who had put on “the freshman 15” factored by about three. I wanted to propose to my girlfriend and decided I would endeavor to offer less of me, gravitationally speaking, when I handed her an expensive and sparkly little rock and requested she be my partner forevermore. No, she isn’t a shallow person and would have said yes regardless. It was just an impetus for me to change that gave me an initial spark of motivation.

Some time around 2001 the book Body for Life was incredibly popular. I considered it an advertising medium for the supplement company owned by the author. My three workout buddies were all doing the program, including spending hundreds of dollars each month on the supplements. And yet, I was bigger, stronger, and leaner than all of them. After an upper body session, my pecs all inflated, one friend said, “I don’t get it, James. We’re all doing Body for Life and you don’t take any supplements at all and you’re more jacked.”

“I’m on the Body for Wife program,” I quipped.

They laughed and another friend said, “That’s awesome. You should write a book with that title.” A light went off, and while there was never a book, I did purchase the bodyforwife URL that same day.

The website launched in 2009 and went through a number of redesigns over the years. Then I switched to writing history and the other fucking James Fell on the east coast who had been squatting on JamesFell dot com for fucking ever finally let it lapse and I snagged that sucker. It’s much better branding for being a history author.

Body for Wife was a popular blog for a time, getting millions of visitors a year. There were hundreds of posts there. Why not leave it be?

Because with the new history book coming out in the fall, it can give a conflicting message. The old site had some serious google juice, and when you search my name that site comes up first. We needed to nuke it to bring my James Fell site to the Google fore.

All those old posts are backed up on my new site, but there is no page to search for them, no list of the hundreds of fitness articles I wrote for major publications either. There is an “old books” page listing my previously published fitness / motivation books, and that’s pretty much it.

When we were taking it down, I thought about giving more details of my previous writing life, but decided I was really just done with all that. Time to focus on the future, which was history.

Okay now I’m going to spin this into a weird little sales pitch.

I liked writing about fitness, but it was not my true love. History was and is and that’s probably why I’m better at it and have been a lot more successful, including financially. I witnessed a lot of toxic bullshit in the fitness and weight loss space during my time there, and I don’t miss dealing with that.

But I also met some of the kindest, smartest, and most decent and caring people working in that industry.

Two of them are Annie and Jennifer, who run a healthy lifestyle program called Balance365. You’ve seen me sell the absolute shit out of my history books, but on rare occasions I promote something else. Really rare occasions. I’ve only ever done affiliate marketing for Annie and Jennifer. And I’ll be honest, I’ve made a lot of money doing it.

But I don’t need the money anymore. The history gig is paying handsomely. And there is this nagging part of me that just wants to leave all the fitness and weight loss stuff in the rear view. Completely cut the ties. And yet, I’m going to promote Balance365 another time, for two reasons.

The main reason is that the program is fucking amazing. I’ve sent hundreds of people their way over the years, and the feedback has been tremendous. Whenever I promoted the program on Facebook many of those people would sound off in the comments of this post agreeing that B365 kicks ass.

The other reason is to support my friends. Annie and Jennifer are wonderful people who truly care and do terrific work to help people as best they can. Did you know that the Federal Trade Commission has conducted several surveys revealing that the weight loss industry is the MOST scam-ridden industry in the U.S.? True story.

Annie and Jennifer are a beacon of light in an industry rife with corruption. And so, I want to share their work with you in case you find what they have to offer valuable. They have an all-new coaching program being launched soon, and if you are interested, I suggest you add your name to the waiting list. No money need change hands at this time. Just sign up for the waiting list. You have only until May 7 to do so. Go here now:

https://jamesfell--balance365.thrivecart.com/balance365-coaching-jf/