Fitness advice is so fragmented and the debates between those who practice various types of fitness are so vigorous that it puts people off to fitness entirely.

Yes and no.

Once you dig past the obviously bullshit claims and scams, and the One True Way prophets (and even Rippetoe suffers this to an extent), there's a lot that's very well established. Much of the problem boils down to a fundamental set of market failures: fitness _is_ simple (not "easy", but simple), and there's relatively little money to be made in the stuff that really works (that's a principle you can apply well beyond the field as well).

The rebuttal piece noted elsewhere in this thread is excellent. Read it.

http://elsbethvaino.com/2013/05/should-you-do-a-newspaper-wo...

The most important thing for me to realize is understanding how your body responds to training, diet, rest, recovery, and stress.

Here's the key: your body is a complex feedback system responding largely with and to hormonal flows you can influence directly through diet and training.

"Training" includes both strength training and cardio. For the typical schmoe or schmoette, a basic level of strength, cardiovascular, mobility, and motor-control fitness is reasonably easy to attain.

An extremely good general overview is Liam Rosen's guide. The Reddit Fitness FAQ is also quite good. Neither is selling anything, a key point:

http://liamrosen.com/fitness.html

http://www.reddit.com/help/faqs/Fitness

Rippetoe is a good introduction to strength. The "New Rules of Lifting" books by Schuler and Cosgrove go a bit broader (and add some scope to strength training), as well as add the introductory phase that some untrained individuals might benefit from which Rippetoe largely omits (though the general principle that "you cannot start too light" is useful to keep in mind.

As to the failings of the NY Times piece, there are many, and these are highly typical of Gretchen Reynolds pieces -- I've come to discount her, and much other, health & fitness reporting at the Times (Gina Kolada is also pretty poor in my experience, despite her stature and tenure).

- It offers little or no actual strength development.

- There's no training of the back (difficult without at least minimal equipment). This is omitting training a major muscle group, and one which is underutilized in most modern daily life. More than even other muscle groups.

- There is no progression. You don't need "muscle confusion", but if you're going to progress in a training program, there has to be some mode of increasing the challenge over time.

- This is effectively a cardio-only program. It's promoting the same myth that the fitness industry has promoted since the 1970s, that cardio is all you need. The simple truth is that muscle mass and strength offer very significant benefits (Schuler and Cosgrove get into this, Robert Arnot's Dr. Bob Arnot's Guide to Turning Back the Clock also addressed this back in 1994), and as you age, you are losing about 0.5% of your muscle mass per year. This is called "sarcopenia", or age-related muscle loss.

So: yes, this is a pretty poor article, the science is lacking. The program is likely "better than nothing", but there are vastly more effective programs (and Rippetoe or "New Rules" would be good starts) which will actually provide far more returns.

The key is this: while "something" may be better than "nothing", "better" is better than "something".

If the article itself would point out these deficiencies and that this program is only a VERY basic starting point, I could accept it. It doesn't. Ergo: it's adding to the problem.

Honestly: Gretchen should be canned.