Kicking off the inaugural Health and Fitness Weekly Review is the Woman’s Day bonus 36 page magazine promising 14 day fast food beach diet, losing 4kg’s in 2 weeks, and Liz Hurley’s best bikini body tips. Let’s check it out, shall we?

The basic premise is that you can eat what this booklet recommends for a fortnight and still drop more kilos than is healthy in that time. I’d be interested to know how much energy this diet provides, because it doesn’t seem like a lot of food, so I’m thinking most people would find it fairly hard not to bust out some extra snacks.

I can’t help getting irritated at advice like “ride your bike to the pub”. Why does it have to be the pub? Why not ride your bike around a park, and not have an accident on the way home because you drank a few too many chardys? Maybe if you’re hoping to lose 4kgs in fourteen days you could avoid the pub. And later on, “invite some friends to join you in the park for a … glass of wine and a few games of softball”. Meh!

There are some crazy alternatives to high fat food, like replacing microwave butter flavoured popcorn with microwave lite butter flavoured popcorn. If you love popcorn so much, get yourself an air popper and save the whole 24 grams of fat. Or instead of replacing a jam doughnut with a jam tart, eat a handful of cherries, a peach or nectarine while they’re still around. Save 10.9 grams of fat, and you won’t have to mess around with fat free salad dressing (you could just use lemon juice and garlic), or reduced fat tzatziki. Instead of drinking a bottle of diet coke, just drink water.

Some of the superstar advice is a bit dodgy: Rachel Hunter cuts out carbs (silly), Elle McPherson eats organic most of the time (but doesn’t seem to realise organic food can still make you fat if you eat too much of it), Danni Minogue trained as a dancer so steers away from dairy and wheat (?) … once again, I profess my love of Cameron Diaz, who seems like a really smart woman.

I’ll leave the last word to well known weight loss expert Paris Hilton: “don’t be afraid to eat fast food. Just keep busy. Go out and dance away the calories”

I rate this booklet **. Don’t try to lose 2 kg a week, and don’t think replacing KFC crispy strips with KFC nuggets is a good idea nutritionally.

Woman’s Day, Page 56 - Be a Loser and Live

If you’ve been waiting for a good reason to lose weight, you should definitely check this page out. It covers some side effects of being overweight, which are all happily reversible.

*** for scare factor

Also on this page is a BMI calculator, and an inspiring story about a man who lost 40kg following a sensible diet and exercise plan. I wonder how many chicken nuggets he was encouraged to eat?

*** - great to see the basics never go out of style.

NW, Page 66 - Breaking Bad Diet Habits

Ah, NW are my favorite so far this week. This is a really sensible article with some great ideas. Smart snacks, great alternatives that actually make sense, so I can forgive the crazy reduced carbs section they’ve started putting in. If you ignore that, this is a high scoring article that gets ****

OK, Page 88 - Mandy’s Body Secrets

Mandy Moore has an awesome body, and it seems she relies on a nutritionist to keep it that way. She keeps a food diary, and gets tested weekly for blood sugar levels, body composition and body fat. That’s pretty obsessive, but I think the idea of talking to a professional about nutrition is very smart. Nutrition is an insanely complex science, and just reading a couple of these magazines can be incredibly contradictory, leaving a lot of people with no idea of what they should or shouldn’t be doing.

Mandy also exercises, but focuses mostly on plyometrics, which are explosive movements, usually performed with body weight only. These aren’t suitable for everyone, but if you’re relatively fit and get bored easily, plyometrics are a great way to increase your muscular power, and bring something new into your routine. Make sure you get good advice, and start off slowly.

At the bottom of the page, there’s a sample of the healthy weight program recommended by the nutritionist, which looks good. Not enough snacks for my liking, but it is just after Christmas, and I’m into a huge eating phase at the moment, so maybe that’s just me. ***

Sadly lacking in weight related headlines this week.