…and This is Why People Have Unrealistic Weight Loss Expectations

There was an ad on my local radio station advertising an exercise class that makes you burn 5000 calories in 30 minutes.

Even the less-awful sources' marketing is pretty eye-roll-y . . . another click-bait race to the bottom, I guess.

springlering62 wrote: »

This lady looks so darned happy at the prospect of having her fat vacuumed out.

And the artful placement of a small array of succulents just makes the whole experience look so darned spa-like.

FWIW, I posted a similar thread over in Debate a couple of years ago, with this as the lead illustration; I think it's worth sharing here for the eye-roll factor:



From my supermarket check-out area, as is probably obvious.

There are a number of things about that magazine cover that are pretty hilarious to me, not least the inevitable juxtaposition of treats and weight-loss diets.

in the early 1990s, when i got into fitness, i read only the men's magazines as the women's always talked about getting toned like it was something other than getting strong and fit.

being fed unrealistic expectations about fitness and weight is nothing new. in older archie comics, they always had archie or the other guys get in shape for sports in a single week, doing workouts that would exhaust anyone. then, a week later - voila! they're in much better shape.

zebasschick wrote: »

in the early 1990s, when i got into fitness, i read only the men's magazines as the women's always talked about getting toned like it was something other than getting strong and fit.

being fed unrealistic expectations about fitness and weight is nothing new. in older archie comics, they always had archie or the other guys get in shape for sports in a single week, doing workouts that would exhaust anyone. then, a week later - voila! they're in much better shape.

On the same thread where I posted that magazine photo**, I posted a pair of Men's Health and Women's Health magazine special issue covers. Both had the main title "No Gym Required" . . . but the subtitle and cover teasers are very different. Start with the first subtitles: "Body-Weight Workouts You Can Do Anywhere" vs. "Hot-Body Workouts You Can Do Anywhere" (guess which was men, which women ). It gets sillier from there (for my tastes).

You'll have to take my word on this next point, but when I flipped through each, it was pretty much the same exercises in the same order page by page, but with a female vs. male model used in the photos.

** for reference, even though it's not that great a thread:
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10751781/wondered-where-people-get-some-of-these-ideas/p1

The photo referenced is part way down page 2.

Here are three crazy ones from the past to add to the list to make us feel better that it is not just us who are nuts about weightloss and succumb to scams or unhealthy practices …
Smoking. — i am sure many of us remember smoking being used informally as a tool to keep from eating but cigarettes were actually promoted as diet aids to women. Remember Virginia Slims? My great aunt worked for a Manhattan advertising agency that did tobacco ads (a true mad woman!) and she used to have a candy dish full of loose cigarettes in her apartment to keep her girlish figure.
Tapeworms - I don’t know of anyone who has actually done it but swallowing diet aids that contained viable tapeworm eggs also used to be a thing. My mom tells me I look like I swallowed a tapeworm
The sleeping beauty diet —apparently used by Elvis, the idea is to sleep so you don’t eat, which is logical to a point, but Elvis and other adherents supposedly used to use alcohol in combination with sedatives in order to try to stay asleep for extended periods of time.