Magazines - Killing Their Readership
I am so sorry I haven't been posting for so long! I'm kind of getting into the swing of things at my new job and I'm also trying to finalise my Master's Degree thesis which is a killer.
I got the idea for this post when I was going for one of my treat meals at the weekend. We went for our usual Chinese takeaway (who can't say no to beef in Cantonese sauce??) and whilst I was waiting I picked up one of those trashy magazines that they have lying around.
I don't think I can really say which one it was but they're all pretty generic when we think of their target market and they're packed with celebrity stories. This one had the done to death story about the Geordie Shore girls "battling" to see who could lose the most weight. I flipped right through without really properly reading it but on the final page was an eating plan which caught my attention. It was apparently the eating plan of a British TV personality and it laid out her diet for the day.
It was packed with the generic brown rice and salmon, nuts for snacks etc. that makes you question why you're sat in the Chinese takeaway wanting your food to hurry up. The basic calorie count for each meal was next to each of them so I added it up and found that it was just under 1200 calories. Cue the alarm bells already!
The vital statistics of the celebrity in question gave her BMR to be around 1400. Worse still the whole bloody thing was endorsed by a sports nutritionist who said that her daily intake was "fantastic" and it was a "great way" to lead a healthy lifestyle. I know I always say to not completely trust an amateur but now this just reaffirms that we're not supposed to trust the media and maybe we should always question the word of "professionals".
It is disheartening to think that a young person could pick up that magazine and think what has been portrayed in it is the ideal for them. I hope that we can learn and teach more readily that these magazines just want to sell copies and don't have your best interests at heart. I don't care which celebrity has lost weight or had a nip-slip but I certainly do care if they have taken a total disregard for their readers to make a couple of quid.
By all means take some recipe or workout ideas but always be cautious if you want to follow a meal plan which is not designed specifically for your needs. If you like the meals in it then make the portions bigger or add more snacks to get the energy intake up to a healthy level. I didn't even follow the meal plans that came with the Ripped In 30 video because it wasn't made for me. This is why I'm always skeptical of people on Tumblr selling meal plans because how do you know if they're fully qualified? I do not believe in unqualified people thinking that they can be paid to give any sort of plans just because they've lost some weight on their own.
The media portrays that we have to eat less to be healthier but in reality we should be eating better quality foods!
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