Bathing suit weather is just five months away. If you start your makeover today, you can be ready. These magazines can help you present a Happy View Year!
Health magazine is one of the more appetizing reads if you’re thinking of getting fit. Trotting out the same advice — eat less sugar, eat more protein and exercise — can get tiresome, but Health entices with photos of ice-cream sandwiches and champagne flutes (just 100 calories, folks)! Elsewhere, Health has snack ideas for “8 Under 80 Calories,” including Godiva chocolate parfaits and almondtini vodkas. This is our kind of diet magazine. This month’s cover girl, Jennie Garth of the original “90210,” said she coped with the pain of her divorce from “Twilight” star Peter Facinelli by putting up Post-It notes to remind her of her awesomeness. Better advice comes from a bunch of youthful-looking centenarians. One in particular, Charlotte Falk, kicks off her day on the treadmill before checking Facebook. Her advice for a healthy life? “Chatting up the barista in Starbucks.”
Natural Health offers tips that echo those in every other healthy living magazine. We were immediately intrigued by the headline “Detox Your Skin” — a timely subject after the stress of the holidays. But we found the piece to simply reiterate the same old recommendation to scrub, mask and seal with lotions. We paid $5 for this? At least throw in a homemade egg mask or avocado scrub. The mag follows up with its promise for alternatives in other areas, though, including a piece on how to fight gum disease. Horsetail capsules anyone? We also like the piece on natural cold and flu fighters. Just one question: How does andrographis leaf taste?
Meredith’s Fitness magazine is, as its title suggests, heavy on exercise tips. While most of these titles expound on the benefits of fitness regimens, we were relieved to find an essay on one yoga routine that resulted in a herniated disc. Proof that some exercise can be bad for you and not all yoga teachers know what they’re doing. Making Fitness worth the money, though, was its main feature on how to listen to your gut, an indicator of emotional well-being and physical health. Not surprisingly, the advice is stay away from sugar and to eat probiotics. It seems that health mags while delivering harsh truths are aware of the realities of modern living. We also like this advice: “Bread is not the enemy and a burger won’t kill you and red wine is tops for your ticker.”
Want to get fit like Michael Phelps? Men’s Fitness provides a mind-numbing chart of his one-hour workout (1x200m freestyle, 4x200m individual medley, 1x400m freestyle, etc., etc.). A bit more inspiring was the profile of Hollywood health freak Ryan Seacrest, which features an undated childhood photo in which he’s wearing braces and geeky glasses and is, well, looking rather porky. In Seacrest’s after-school routine growing up, he’d typically “make a plate of nachos on a cookie sheet,” the “American Idol” host says. “I’d lay the cheese on top with some jalapenos and crank the oven up to broil, just to get the cheese brown.” Nowadays, Seacrest has, of course, gone to the other extremes, and honestly, we’re not sure which we prefer. “Even though they’re not bad, I tend to eat the wrong amount of almonds,” Seacrest frets, rather annoyingly.
Men’s Health likewise treats food amounts, with a profile on Newark Mayor Cory Booker, who appears to be struggling with what doctors might call a tendency to pig out. “My goal is to eat five small meals” a day, says Booker, whose 6-foot, 3-inch frame lately had slimmed down to 267 pounds after it ballooned to an “embarrassing” 309 pounds this summer. Booker attributes his recent success to cutting out midnight snacks, which typically might consist of Ben & Jerry’s Oatmeal Cookie Chunk — “possibly the whole pint,” Booker admits. Elsewhere, we liked the advice on New Year’s resolutions from celebrated author and former raging alcoholic Augusten Burroughs. “Take action. Start small. Make a goal for the day or even for the hour,” Burroughs advises. “Minor victories will quickly accumulate.”
Indeed, the New Yorker’s piece on how to “climate-proof” cities reads somewhat like a daunting New Year’s resolution: to prepare for future disasters like Hurricane Sandy looks like a big commitment without a clear payoff. Cash-crazy proposals have included building a $6.5-billion storm-surge barrier just north of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, or a five-mile gate that would stretch from Sandy Hook, NJ, to the Rockaway. “Yet, even if we managed to stop increasing global carbon emissions tomorrow, we would probably experience several centuries of additional warming, rising sea levels, and more frequent dangerous weather events,” the mag admits. We can hear the campaign slogans now: “Don’t just think about your kids. Think about your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandkids.”