Why I won't buy "health and fitness" magazines anymore

 I will look like this one day...

I used to religiously buy at least 2 or 3 health and fitness magazines a month. I would read them cover to  cover, making notes of workouts, nutrition tips and of course, supplements.

Now, I'm nowhere near to being a fitness model, personal trainer or nutritionist, but I've picked up a fair amount of knowledge along the way of training and chatting to people who are qualified and know what they're doing. And I've come to realise that most of those so-called health magazines could care less about health and more about advertising money.

Take, for example, the latest one I bought (and the last). In an advice column, a woman writes in and says the following:
a) She's in her first trimester of pregnancy
b) She's gained over 10 kgs during that time
c) She wants to know if it's safe to take CLA and green tea capsules to stop further weight gain and promote weightloss.

 The person writing back to PregnantLady doesn't:
a) Ask about her eating habits
b) Suggest she keep a food diary for a week, then
c) Cut out all processed foods (like chips,chocolates, white bread etc), and high sugar foods for a month and see what happens.

Nope, he merrily tells her "SURE! TAKE THE PILLS!"

Why do I have such a big problem with that? Because earlier in my life, I would read articles/advice columns like that, and think "Great! I don't have to change my habits at all! I can just take fat burners and I'll lose weight! YAHOO!!"

Obviously, all it did was decrease my bank balance. And some of those OTC fat burners gave me heart palpitations and feelings of anxiety and paranoia. And I ended up fatter than ever. No thanks. Weightloss is 80% what you eat, and 20% workouts.

Another thing I noticed, was that they had a little blurb about Type II diabetes, and how people need to watch what they eat and try to prevent getting diabetes. Right underneath that article, was an ad for an energy bar. Which is mostly sugar, processed carbs, caffeine, and artifical everything. Holy hypocrite, Batman! I've noticed a lot of things like that in these mags, where they write an article extolling XYZ, and on the opposite page, have an ad for a product that goes against XYZ.

Now, these magazines aren't cheap. So it irks me to find simple grammar and spelling mistakes. The kind that MS Word so helpfully picks up and underlines for you. Hell, it'll even fix it for you! Or better yet, design and layout issues - say, for example, a picture is placed above text, but they don't check it's placing, and it cuts the top half of the first sentence off. Really? You can't check little things like that?

And finally, quite a few of these fitness rags are slowly turning into Cosmopolitan. You know. They put articles like this in a gym mag:

HOW TO STUN YOUR MAN WITH 3 NEW SEX MOVES TONIGHT!!
TURN EVERY DAY FOOD ITEMS INTO SEX TOYS!!
HOW TO SEDUCE YOUR MAN BY DEVELOPING DOUBLE JOINTED LIMBS!!
MASTER HIS MAN-BITS!!

Thanks, but no thanks. I'm kinky enough to keep Asshat ExHusband happy (and exhausted), and I think if I were to approach him with a pineapple, some lingerie and a lascivious  smile, he would scream like a girl and sprint away.  Not to mention, I'm reading that magazine to get tips on how to squat better with higher weights, not figure out how to act like a porn star.

On the bright side, I'm saving a couple hundred bucks a month now.