The Problems with Magazine Advice on Diets and Workouts

Diet and workout advice is generally good. Well, generally, yes! Unless, of course, you are truly serious with losing weight and embracing a healthier lifestyle for the long-term, in which case, generic magazine advice on diets and workouts becomes more of a problem than a solution.

Today, the increasing awareness towards the importance of healthy diets and regular workouts has fueled a media revolution that has put a very serious premium on delivering news, information, and advice to the people. Because of this, magazines and many other media outlets like the internet go out of their way to write news and tips about “cutting edge” diet and workout trends that are purportedly able to make you lose this many pounds in just this many days. The same magazines also widely advertise about how this celebrity or that singer was able to lose this many pounds with just “this diet” or “that workout” program.

As a result, people falsely believe that the same diet or workout will work for them outright. Unfortunately, this is not true. The number of people who succeed in losing weight merely from following what magazines and internet websites advice are drastically outnumbered by the people who try without success.

Sadly, people often take those failures personally, believing that their inability to make life-long changes in health are due more to their lack of willpower rather than the mismatch between themselves and the diet plan they are following from the latest issue of the glossiest health magazine they can find on supermarket shelves. This leaves a long-lasting psychological and emotional trauma that may lead people to just give up on trying to lose weight because all the magazine articles “never really work anyway.”

Behind every successful weight loss story are two basic truths:

People who are successful in embracing a new and healthier lifestyle don’t conceptualize their changes as a product of a strict diet or a specific workout. On the contrary, they look at it as a journey, a renewal, a changing of habits from bad to good, and more importantly, a learning process that allowed them to develop their own set of healthy lifestyle choices that they can adhere to.

The same people who have dramatically lost weight and have managed to keep it off have taken a personalized approach to their lifestyle change. They didn’t simply pick-up the latest diet from a popular book or health magazine and suddenly began seeing tremendous results. They looked at their situation, made the right set of changes, and used that to effectively lose weight.

These two fundamental truths to losing weight and embracing a healthier lifestyle underscore the problems with magazine advice on diets and workouts.

The Problem with Magazine Advice

Watch out for these pitfalls that can suck you into the false promises of glossy magazines when the truth is, you are better off embracing a personalized approach to weight loss.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to healthier living and weight loss!

Sadly, magazine advice preaches that weight loss is simply about looking at what works for others and copying those and then expecting the same results. “If it works for Beyoncé, then it will probably work for me too.”

The pitfall in this mindset is that it cuts across the whole idea of personalized and customized weight loss planning to specifically meet your needs. For example, it’s very easy to find a diet plan on a magazine page telling you to eat this and eat that, avoid this and avoid that. Without thinking, people quickly try the plan because it comes from a prestigious magazine.

But you can’t expect everyone to immediately feel comfortable to that diet plan. A person weighing 250 pounds planning to go down to 150 pounds in 6 months will have vastly different diet needs than one who only needs to lose that extra 30 pounds. When both persons pick up the diet plan, guess which one is doomed to failure?

Particularly when it comes to proper eating, the diets today preach avoidance of unhealthy foods. However, depriving yourself of food that you’re craving takes effort and that effort adds up. Eventually, it becomes too much to bear. Attempting to avoid thoughts and cravings has been proven to make those urges stronger so much so that people eventually succumb to their urges and end up throwing their diets out of whack.

The solution is to work with your desires. Instead of denying yourself, learn how to find ways to make a healthier meal that is roughly the equivalent of what you’re craving for using appropriate portions of healthy, natural ingredients. You can’t find that on a magazine cover. You need a plan that is specifically tailored to your needs!

Magazine advice undersells the whole story.

This is a particularly entertaining aspect of what magazine advice delivers. When you are reading magazine articles, notice how everything is written on a cheerful and happy note. Of course, the goal is to have you read through the entire page. Writing a weight loss article from a gloomy perspective will have you drop the magazine after the first paragraph and surely, magazine editors do not want that.

Magazines clearly undersell the whole story when it comes to weight loss. They paint a very rosy picture of the future when the truth is far from it. Weight loss and transitioning to a healthier lifestyle is tough. It requires tremendous sacrifices. You will have days when you want to pull your hair out because you desperately crave for a slice of cake and you don’t know how to deal with that urge.

Success in weight loss requires understanding what’s up ahead and being willing to commit to the change even if you know that the going will be tough. When it begins to get tough, you’ve already conditioned your mind that this is what’s supposed to happen. And so you power through and persevere. Now consider thinking that dieting and working out is just as easy as walking in the park; when you come to difficult times, you’re more than likely to quit.

Not every magazine advice is founded on good science.

Magazine articles are not necessarily founded on sound science. Whatever sells is more important to magazines than what is scientifically correct. In fact, it’s not that hard to find outrageous diet claims that will pass for magazine headlines just so readers will pick up the magazine and begin reading.

Good advice is one that has been proven to work. You should see it in action. If you can’t personally get assurance that eating bread for the whole day will make you lose weight as some diets would have you believe, then why would you want to do it? If you can’t be sure that it will work because you haven’t seen it at work, you are better off trying something else.

Magazine advice is written with the objective of “selling ideas”, not necessarily producing results.

This is an extension of the previous point but it needs more emphasis because it is an important concept that we must all embrace: magazines are written to sell but not necessarily produce results. Even when you know that magazine editors have your best interest at heart, you don’t see them knocking on your door asking if the latest article on being vegetarian has helped you drop a size. Instead, all you are recycled articles on recurring ideas published weekly.

See if you have read these outrageous magazine titles:

“Get your body beach ready. Now!”

“Your best-ever body in four weeks.”

“Shrink one size in four weeks.”

“Drop a dress size by Saturday!”

Whatever sells is what works. It doesn’t work the other way around where whatever works will sell. Think about that the next time you feel tempted to try out a magazine advice because it seemed so easy.

Not all writers for magazine advice believe in what they write. Often, it’s all about what their customer research tells them.

Surprise! When you read a magazine article, are you really sure that the writer has tried all the ideas he or she is writing down and narrating to you? More importantly, how can you be sure the writer is really a disciple of healthy living and not someone who masks himself as that just so he or she can continue writing articles?

You should believe the people who have been there and have done it; the same people who can honestly tell you it won’t be easy and you’ll feel miserable at some point before you can feel better. Don’t fall for generic headlines but always think about the advice that is rooted in truth.

Not all magazine advice is bad but oftentimes, you can no longer tell the difference between what is true and what is fluff. As a result, magazine advice will only carry you so far.

It is high-time you stop believing in them. Instead, find a partner who can help you make that personalized journey that takes your goals and current circumstances into account. Learn the concepts yourself. Stop being a victim to generic advice and start forging your own path to health. Remember; the truly successful people who lost weight and kept it off are the ones who didn’t get a new diet or workout but embraced a new lifestyle. These are the people who made the journey. These are the people who changed.

Which magazines do you subscribe to and how are you doing so far?

After this, what’s the first change that you’re going to make to start making lifestyle decisions that are specifically tailored to your needs?