There is no shortage of celebrities who like to pretend they are fit and healthy. But just like the roles they play, this kind of fitness is just pretend.
Over the past 25 years, we have had to endure all kinds of celebrity fitness gurus and had more models, actors and actresses tell us how to eat and exercise than you would think our society could take. However, thanks to a culture of celebrity worship that’s still going strong in the year 2008 Hollywood-types and celebrity personal trainers are everywhere trying to sell the public anything and everything that has to do with health and fitness.
Even fops like Dr. Phil have jumped on the fitness bandwagon. Seriously, it’s bad enough that people take his advice about how to run their families, but health and fitness advice? That is depressing, Dr. Phil McGraw as a personal trainer.
Thanks to AOL and People Magazine, we have a glimpse of a wide variety of celebrity fitness nonsense, as the online service has posted the eponymous magazine’s feature titled, “100 Tips for a Hollywood Body” that’s due on the newsstands this week. The preview provided by AOL presents us with a veritable cornucopia of the kind of garbage that passes for health and fitness advice, with some of these great “tips” coming to us from some celeb personal trainers.
Here are a couple of the most nonsensical bits of info that People want us to swallow as being healthy and/or effective.
Minka Kelly who is on “Friday Night Lights” runs at least 45-minutes a day and lifts weights 3 times per week. This is a sure-fire recipe for burnout, over training and injury, and serves as a classic example of quantity over quality. There’s no doubt that countless impressionable young women will take this advice to heart and embark on this over-the-top kind of program.
This is too much exercise for anyone to perform over any period of time. The amount of pounding that over 300-minutes of running puts on the body per week is guaranteed to result in a litany of problems from orthopedic problems to a loss of range of motion. And – if Kelly actually even does this routine, as it might just be public relations nonsense – her weight training workouts have got to be awful because she’s so shot from all of the running.
Kelly is a 27-year old woman who has the genetic gifts that allow her to play a high school cheerleader. It’s not the workout, it’s the genetics. This is quintessential Hollywood fitness nonsense, but wait, there’s more. Next up is celebutard Kim Kardashian, whose claim to biggest claim to fame is a sex tape, and claims she likes her shape but gets rid of her cellulite by focusing on toning and doing martial arts on a treadmill. And of course she loves Spanx body shapers.
With this one it’s tough to know where to begin. There’s no such thing as a toning workout and cellulite certainly cannot be reduced via a toning regimen. Cellulite actually poses one of the biggest problems known to mankind, for despite a variety of miracle advances in the field of cosmetic surgery “the Big C” can’t be banished.
Martial arts on a treadmill means that Kardashian is doing 2 things in a substandard fashion, and this kind of workout is representative of the zany wing of Hollywood fitness. You’d expect to see nonsense like this on “The Biggest Loser.” The nutritional tip from Kate Hudson will no doubt appeal to all of those – too many – people who love to deny themselves food, as she eats light and will have yogurt for breakfast and salads for dinner.
Super advice, especially for all of those women out there with poor body images who already have been taught that not eating and eating less is best. Hudson serves as a great example of how just because someone looks good, doesn’t mean that they are healthy or capable. And I really don’t think she just eats yogurt and salad for any stretch of time, but even if she does it doesn’t mean you should.
But this just brings up the issue that you can’t believe everything that you read, especially when dealing with celebrity fitness and nutrition. This is a nutrition tip that can be thrown in the circular filing cabinet. David Beckham, we’re told, has become much more health conscious since moving to Los Angeles and as a result is now working out twice a day. More crap. He was one of the best soccer players in the world for years, but now that he’s in La-La Land he’s turning it up a notch.
Guys – and girls – who are world-class athletes are different than the rest of us. Beckham’s twice a week workouts are likely bunk, and even if he is following such a program, the rest of us have nothing to gain from joining him. If you work, have kids and a family and all of that jazz you don’t have a lot of time to be exercising twice a day.
Ignore this tip as well. There’s more nonsense as well. But in the efforts to not be totally negative, I’d like to recognize 2 celeb tips that are quite helpful.
First of all we have Kate Beckinsale who says her personal trainer has taught her “sleep is like the Holy Grail,” and “that if you’re tired your workouts will suffer.” Good advice from Kate. Another celeb that seems to be on the right track is multi-talented Hugh Jackman.
The star of stage and screen recommends interval training and from what I remember from the lead-up to the first X-Men movie really makes an effort in the gym. But the lesson to be learned from these two – especially as it pertains to celebrity fitness – is that both Beckinsale and Jackman have great genetics.
Combine this with a good work ethic and responsible program – and the fact that their appearance is their career – and the sky is the limit when it comes to how good these 2 can look. It might seem unfair – hell it is unfair – but most people don’t have these genetic gifts.
So don’t get all caught up in the hype and promise of celebrity fitness, and fall into the trap that appearance is synonymous with fitness and health.
