Mad About...

From time to time, I read some of the mass-market fitness magazines.  Sometimes I learn a new exercise or two, or hear about a new trend in workouts.  A lot of the time, I just get mad. 

Here, in no particular order, are things that annoy the heck out of me when I read magazines.

 

People “working out” without sweat.  The bulk of us do not look Insta-worthy at the gym and we really don’t need another layer of gym anxiety about how we look.  This also applies to people with super double extra fancy workout outfits.  (If cute workout clothes motivate some of us, I am not here to yuck your yum.)  If we still look picture-perfect at the end of the workout, we’re not working hard enough.

 

Product “solutions” for stuff we can do free.  I recently saw an article touting some kind of essential oils that mimic various locales in nature like forests.  Go outside, people!  (Yes, if you don’t live close to a forest, that might be a challenge, but nearly all of us live where we can go to a park.)

 

Scare articles.  Most articles about rare weird conditions fall into this category as well as most of the stuff about supplements.  The great majority of us get plenty of nutrients from our diets and can cover gaps with a basic multivitamin. 

 

Stupid recipes.  I confess, I’m a little judgy here.  Who needs a recipe for avocado toast?  On the other extreme, who has time to make tiny pancake sliders with an individual blackberry and blueberry toothpicked through each one?  And what was the person smoking who decided to do a multi-page spread on “healthy” yogurt popsicles for breakfast?

 

Individual solutions for systemic problems.  The articles and ads touting weight loss drugs spring to mind as a shining example of this.  (I am not judging those of us who find the new generation of weight loss drug to be a Godsend.  As should be clear as I keep writing here…)  We live in a society where it is harder to eat real food than it is to eat super processed stuff.  It is harder to be healthy than to be unhealthy.  Our culture pushes us to run on sugar, caffeine, and alcohol as well as other drugs and then offers us more drugs to combat the problems that ensue.  It’s real work to unplug from our unhealthy systems and magazines are not likely to help us with that because unplugging does not usually involve buying a bunch of products.

 

What makes you annoyed when you read fitness magazines?