A new study has revealed the amount of money Brits waste on fitness and diet fads, including everything from memberships they’ve never used and workout clothes that remain in the back of the wardrobe to supplements that were thrown away.

Of course, we’ve all seen the “new year, new me” motto bouncing around all over  social media, with us all rolling our eyes, and rightly so, because it was found that Britons spend £26.8 billion on fitness and health items that they never use in attempts to keep healthy and in shape.

The amount Britons waste on fitness fads and diet crazes has been revealed, finding that there is £26.8 billion wasted on fitness and diet fads across the UK. Unused gym memberships cost the average Briton £429 per person, while £179 is wasted on unworn workout clothes and £57 on discarded health and fitness supplements.

The team at the protein supplement company, P-Fit.co.uk, polled a total of 2,321 UK-based adults, all of whom were aged 18-65 years old. Respondents were quizzed about their fitness and diet habits and how much they had invested in their health.

Initially respondents were asked if they felt they spent a lot of money trying to keep fit and healthy, to which 31% stated they did. They were then asked if they thought that these purchases helped with their overall fitness to which 87% stated they did.

Afterwards, respondents were asked “How much have you spent on unused gym or fitness memberships, if anything?” to the average answer emerged as £429. They were asked to detail how much they had spent on any untaken health and fitness supplements, to which the average spend on unused supplements was revealed to be £57 per person. Finally, they were asked to consider their spend on any unworn workout clothes and accessories, to which the average Briton confessed that they had spent £179 on gym and workout clothes they had never worn.

In order to analyse these figures, researchers next took figures from the Office Of National Statistics* to calculate how much money Britons aged 18-65 wasted in the health and fitness industry as a whole. Using the average wasted spends of £429 on gym membership, £179 on workout clothes and £57 on supplements, they calculated that Britons are wasting £26,757,160,780 (£26.8 billion) on the industry.

Finally respondents were asked why they kept spending money on these objects when they did not always use them, to which the majority (71%) stated that they had ‘high hopes at the start’. A further 63% believed that if they spent more money, they were more likely to use the products or memberships that they had bought.

Ross Beagrie, Managing Director at P-Fit.co.uk commented:

“In the fitness industry consumers often don’t know which products they need, this often means that consumers don’t get the results that they expect. Before making the purchase be sure the products are what you need to achieve your specific goals. A great way to stop yourself from wasting money on supplements that you don’t need is to use services that tailor your order specifically to your needs, as P-Fit does; many people end up discarding products because they don’t work in the way they expected them to. A personally tailored product allows supplements to be suited to your lifestyle and goals and will also provide guidance on how and when to take them to get the best results.”