Gym Poet
Rage Against David Zinczenko
- David Z. (Via Wiki.)
I'm sure I'm biased by the sheer amount of spam I receive from Rodale publications daily, but I really have a new agenda: Anti-DZ. If you don’t know who David Zinczenko is, I suppose in the simplest of terms he’s the Editor-in-Chief for Men’s Health and Women’s Health, and the face behind Yahoo Health's "Eat This Not That" blog. Which is to say, he's got his well-manicured fingers all over the controls in the engine room of health-media-industrial complex. I simply think of D.Z. as that humorless manipulative bastard who mainly blogs to promote his crappy books. His articles are about as sociable and funny as those cardboard posters some bums hold up that read: "Not Gonna Lie Need $$$ for Beer."
Here’s a great example, plucked from his recent Yahoo article on “[sipping] your way to a flat belly”....
There is a potion that magically strips away pounds from your body, improves your overall health, lengthens your life, makes you more attractive to the opposite sex, and keeps you lean forever. Even better, you can have as much of this magic weight-loss potion as you want, for free, and start stripping away pounds—perhaps even several dozen pounds this year alone—without exercise, without dieting, without visiting the set of Nip/Tuck… What is this magical elixir? It’s water. Really? Really. You don't even need to mix in that fancy fat-burning stuff from the vitamin store.
Allow me to to explicate my somewhat irrational disgust. First, water is not a potion, dumbass, and we’re not a bunch of brainless dehydrated fatties. Second, your faux informercial-ese makes me yawn. Third, David, your knowledge of “fancy fat-burning stuff from the vitamin store" sounds disturbingly first hand.
Right, but it's not that Zinczenko's is dumb. He's not. In fact, he’s a brilliant marketing schemer. He inserts research blithely into his articles to create page turning hooks, and then peppers the whole thing with retail opportunities. There are six links to crap you should buy hidden in the above-mentioned article. And still, I could forgive all that: His faux earnestness and clever sales pitchy-ness. This is America after all, but what's unforgivable is his lack of a humor and his basic complicity with the whole lonely fantasy land of easy diets and perfect bodies. His whole "EAT THIS NOT THAT" schtick (the column, the book, the future Hollywood blockbuster...) is a guilt trip balled up into a command couched in disgust. It's an anthem to those belly-stroking Amstel sippers waifing around the Meat Packing district. Six minute meals? 15 minute workouts? Help!
Sometimes a Snickers-stacked Flurry and a side of fried chicken is sexy and a good idea! And so too is working out till you drop. No doubt D.Z. has legions of fans, but I'm hopeful that the era of D.Z. and his evil diet-obsessed minions is on the wane. Wishful thinking? Maybe, but still I want to scream: STOP PUSHING IT ON US ALREADY! David Zinczenko, you need to become a relic. Can't we all revel in the knowledge a shared, healthy community can bring, and get past calorie-counting and diet-fads? I'll concede that fashion mag looks are eye catching, but they’re less beautiful, ultimately, than health and happiness. And Flurries.
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Comments
BRAVO!!!! Gwan with your bad self, 'Hawk.
Submitted by joesgirl on 06.09.10 at 04:09.
could not agree more. I made the mistake of signing up for his emails once - unwittingly... nightmare. SPAM filter had to be put in place.
Submitted by Butwhatifido on 06.09.10 at 04:12.
Not really his fault....it's the consumers who consume his products. He's only popular b/c people listen.....
Submitted by michlny on 06.09.10 at 04:30.
Mich, even if you're popular because people listen, it's still your fault if you're spewing out bullshit. And I call bullshit.
Submitted by Mr. Mohawk on 06.09.10 at 04:54.
Yeah, you're right.....but still, if we 'd all call BS, he'd be done.
Submitted by michlny on 06.09.10 at 05:11.
I agree with you, DZ is a spam factory. But "get past calorie-counting"? Calorie-counting is one of the more rational means of weight loss, and weight loss is one of those things some of us have to undertake from time to time. Plus, you can count calories and still have the occasional fried-chicken Flurry.
Submitted by sadie on 06.09.10 at 06:26.
Oops, double-post, sorry.
Submitted by sadie on 06.09.10 at 06:27.
Actually, I have to disagree about the whole calorie counting thing. It's this type-A placebo dieting fad that completely ignores the fact that we burn calories or store them sometimes based on the time of the month, the time of our lives, etc. If we were happy lil' robots ingesting calories and burning them in a mathematically seamless way, it'd make sense. We don't. On top of that, calorie counting has taken precedent over just being aware of how our bodies work, what happens when we eat, and what food to select, how we burn calories, when we should eat, and so on. Everyone on this site knows someone, or has been someone, that's number crunched thousands of calories a day, hundreds of thousands a year, and barely altered their body.
On top of that, this article had much more teeth when I wrote it. Allow me to explicate my somewhat irrational disgust at Social Workout: if you ask for the dog, deal with the bark dammit.
Submitted by Mr. Mohawk on 06.09.10 at 10:46.
i'm with the 'hawk's on this one!
Submitted by msh258 on 06.10.10 at 09:14.
Definitely NOT about calorie counting. What you eat matters. The quality of food matters. Where it comes from matters.
Simply looking at food as calories in and exercise as calories out is why we are (as a society) all so sick in the first place.
Submitted by michlny on 06.10.10 at 09:32.
ExACTly. It's good to have the support of two of SW's hardest of the hardcore members.
Submitted by Mr. Mohawk on 06.10.10 at 12:07.
I'm not sure why you think calorie counting is entirely independent of other nutritional concerns... Clearly 1500 calories of fudge pops does not have the same body-transforming power as 1500 calories of a balanced diet. But we are mlogging our time, even though that doesn't convey the intensity of our workouts or the quality of our form... so apparently the numbers have some place in all this.
I may be biased. I've dropped 20 lbs this year counting calories in conjunction with exercise. But like I said, caloric content is hardly the only criteria I use when choosing what to eat. Deliciousness, for instance, is a major factor, locality is another. And clearly a lot of the calorie-reduced foods touted by "health-media-industrial complex" (love this term by the way) can be significantly less healthy than their full-content counterparts. For instance, DZ can say, "Eat fat-free yogurt instead of full-fat yogurt," but then you'd be losing basically the only power yogurt has to keep you full, plus all the nutritional benefits of butterfat. So yeah, calorie counting has limits. I just think it has a place in the overall picture.
Submitted by sadie on 06.10.10 at 02:43.
Oh, yeah, and on burning calories differently at different times of the month... soooo true. In fact I personally confirmed this by statistically analyzing my daily weight for several months (like I said, I like numbers). Auto-correlation goes all to hell every 28 days.
Submitted by sadie on 06.10.10 at 02:47.
ha, sadie, thank you for your response. I didn't mean to imply calorie counting is bad, but it isn't function if it's one's sole focus. We're a society so hung up on numbers... weight, pant size, age, calories... it's just seems so self defeating, when there's an alternative that's incredibly beneficial and involves less math: informed, healthy, positive life style and diet decisions.
Submitted by Mr. Mohawk on 06.10.10 at 02:58.
This post made laugh -->
Kate Hudson says: "I've Been Calorie Counting and It Works"
Submitted by michlny on 06.11.10 at 10:13.
michlny it shows errors at my side, can't load the post.
Submitted by lepar on 10.10.11 at 08:48.
Here too, what could be the problem?
Submitted by teniva on 01.28.12 at 11:54.