Women! Know your limits!

There are two words guaranteed to make my eyes roll. Well, there are many infact, “fat free”, “1kg dumbbells”, “Egg whites”, “No carb”, you get the idea. Today though, I’m here to discuss my biggest pet peeve:

“Women’s magazines”.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but these are potentially the biggest problem facing women and young girls in society. Now, that’s a big statement I know. There are many factors in a woman’s life that determine her view of her body, how she measures her worth and how she views herself within society, however we cannot deny that women’s magazines are more than happy to place us into categories, deciding FOR us what our worth is, usually based on how we look. Or, in some cases, how we don’t look.

While this post is very focused on us ladies, for any of you guys reading this, spare 5 minutes and follow my thinking here.

I have being doing some research, based on online magazines, Facebook pages for women magazines, both fitness and beauty. I’ve also done the same for mens magazines. I can sum these 2 types of publications into one simple sentence:

Mens magazines: Hey! Want bigger muscles? Yeah you do, here you go, follow this workout to get shredded and strong. When you’re done, here are some sex tips to show off that bod and give your girl the time of her LIFE.

Sex sells. Simple.

Women’s magazines: Follow this 6 week fat melting diet! Studies show fat people get cancer so lets get that weight off. Here is a 1200 calorie diet to follow for 7 days, but first try this juice diet for 3 days to ‘boost’ your results. Be attractive for your man, lose that extra fat and get a bikini body. Are you thin yet?

Fear sells.

As Sara Pascoe put it: “These magazines can be condensed into one short quiz; Ladies, what do you hate the most? Is it A: your face or B: your body”.

Because of this, one fundamental fact has been forgotten: How to be healthy as a woman. The word ‘healthy’ doesn’t correspond well with juice detoxes and 1200 calorie diets. The focus is on weight, how to be thinner, because thinner equals happier…doesn’t it?

In an effort to find this elusive diet many women, including myself, have turned to dangerous diets and questionable methods in order to obtain the thinner – happier status. The plans out that are targeted to women tend to be all about our limits:

Limit your calories to 1200 a day

Limit the fat content of your food

Limit how much high intensity work you do

Limit that ‘cavewoman’ lifestyle if you want to be healthy

It seems these days that comments about women’s bodies (or parts of their bodies) are fair game, anyone can comment on how a woman looks. Need I ask you to look any further than the latest Nicki Minaj video? After all, his anaconda don’t want none unless you got buns hun…. O_O.

There is no quick fix for the plague that is bad advice from Womens’ magazines. The media, the supplement industry, the food industry, even the fitness industry are well aware that we humans like quick results. It seems we like quick results even more than lasting results and it’s easy to play on that. The truth is if magazines had a ‘diet’ that truly worked they would only have to print it once, and they would charge hundreds for that one publication if it was effective. When it comes to health, fitness and beauty, you get what you pay for and they are quite happy to sell us false promises for £3.99 a pop.

My thoughts on this are simple:

Ladies, avoid any diet that tries to convince you to starve yourself, work yourself into the ground and talks excessively about what you can’t do.

Throw away those women’s magazines (recycle of course) and pick up a mens health every now and then. Yes, men’s magazines still focus on a certain body type but seeing the words “Strong, Healthy, Fit, Toned and Lean” are a welcome change from “Smaller, Thinner, Lighter, Low fat and Juice diet”.

Coming to the realisation that you can change how you look by gaining something e.g strength and muscle rather than changing how you look by losing something e.g tasty food and good health, is a powerful moment.

The opinion that you can improve your health by looking after your body and improving things like physical strength is much more positive than focusing on how thin you should be or how many crunches you can do on the 500ml of cucumber juice you had for breakfast.

Let’s forget about our limits and talk about our possibilities.

* Gold star if you recognised the Harry Enfield reference in the title :)