A few weeks ago I was returning from a trip. While in the airport I decided to scan the health magazine section and count how many "Ab" articles were on the cover. That day alone, there were 6. Frankly, these publications are not cheap. They pretty much are in the $5-$7 range. "Slim your waste" "Get ripped abs" "Blast your belly in 7 minutes". I decided to buy a couple and flip through some of the others. The real question is, how can they sell this junk? Followed up by why in the world do people keep buying it?
The format is the same. A great looking, very fit, usually a lady model, either demonstrating a few exercises or showing her eating a revolutionary food like broccoli or spinach(tongue in cheek). EVERYONE knows that this model did NOT get in shape doing what she is telling you to do. Here are some names of exercises from Cosmopolitan Magazine:
Wide Leg Plank
Side Bridge
Belly Twister
V Crunch
All say to do pretty much the same thing; 3 sets of 10 reps. What if your not tired after 10? Why not do 15? 20? What's the criteria for success? I thought it was common knowledge that you can't spot reduce? For those of us that believe for exercise to be effective it must be intense really scoff.
Our society is facing an obesity epidemic. Therefore people are easy marks to buy snake oil as a cure. This is a terribly egregious example
CONFESSION: Its a little embarrassing to admit but I've been buying Golf Digest and Golf Magazine for 30 years. Every month; every cover has something like "Blast your drives" "Escape the sand" "Beat your slice" blah blah blah. There are people that used to buy Playboy and say they did it for the ads. I rationalize that I do it for the articles about players and tournaments. However (sigh) I always sneak peaks at the tips.
Keith Morton
