When I saw a headline on the cover of a women's magazine that read "20 MINUTES TO SLIM" in bold letters, I wondered who do they think is reading this stuff.
No, it wasn't The National Inquirer; it was your mother's women's magazine and your mother's mother's women's magazine.
No one in their right mind believes in miracle diets anymore, let alone slim in 20 minutes. Get out of here.
I'll admit that in the past I've been a sucker for such sensationalism. I couldn't resist the urge to find this silver bullet, a fountain of youth, the cure-all, so I could either laugh at this ridiculousness or cry with joy.
I studiously turned to the Table of Contents, madly searching for "20 MINUTES TO SLIM."
After flipping back and forth between the "Live Well," "Style," "Solutions," "Eat Well" and "In Every Issue" sections, I finally found the article under "Health." Well, of course.
No wonder I had trouble seeing it, since they changed up the wording to "Get Fit...20 minutes to SLIM - the quick workout that burns up to 250 calories" on page 80. Workout? Who said anything about working out?
I was hoping that I had already worked them off my 250 calories by the time I reached page 80.
It seems that most of us, especially women, have dieted our entire lives. I probably burn several thousand calories a day and hardly shed a pound.
Though, I admit my serious doubt didn't keep me from reading the article. And then I uncovered the truth beneath the untruth: "20 MINUTES TO SLIM" doesn't exist.
What does exist is a fat-burning, butt busting routine requiring 10 moves of two minutes each.
And, that's not all. Can you believe it? You have to do this workout three days a week for three weeks, which means you may "feel" slimmer, but you're actually not.
Every since I was 13 and that darn TV commercial promised that Noxema would miraculously erase zits, I've had a love-hate relationship with the media.
Why can't I be slim in 20 minutes, like the headline says, only with my feet propped up, staring at the tube with a jumbo box of my favorite truffles and an 84 ounce Mountain Dew to top it off. Yeah, I think I could do that.
No one in their right mind believes in miracle diets anymore, let alone slim in 20 minutes. Are you kidding me?
2010 © Copyright Paula Damon. A resident of Southeast South Dakota, Paula Damon
is a national and state award-winning columnist. Her columns have won
first-place in National Federation of Press Women, South Dakota Press Women and
Iowa Press Women Communications Contests. In the 2009 and 2010 South Dakota
Press Women Communications Contest, Paula's columns took first-place awards
statewide. To contact Paula, email pauladamon@iw.net, follow her blog at
www.my-story-your-story.blogspot.comand find her on Facebook.
No comments:
Post a Comment