Slimmer Magazine

Reviewed by Dietitian, Juliette Kellow BSc RD

Fact File - Slimmer

Issue reviewed:	May 2005
Pages:	124, 35% Advertising
Circulation:	No figures available
Cover Price:	£2.30

Content

Success stories, fitness, food, recipes and beauty. Plus this issue comes with a free booklet to help you lose a stone.

Overall view

Slimmer is one of the few slimming magazines that’s independent of a club and so, in theory, it should offer unbiased information. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case as it looks as though many of the features have been given to the magazine free of charge in return for promoting the companies that provide this information. For example, many of the recipes have come from new books and most of the success stories come from slimming organisations such as Weight Watchers and WLR. Having said that, the range of success stories is good, with the youngest slimmer being 21 and the oldest 67, and a minimum weight loss of 1st 10lb to a maximum of 6st.

In Detail

There are also a large number of features that simply promote products and look as though they’ve been put together by reproducing information from press releases. The one saving grace is that food information and recipes all provide calorie and fat information. Other features are few and far between and those that do appear are badly written, poorly structured, lack information or are simply unoriginal. For example, the fashion feature fails to give any sizes and fitness topics include yoga – again! For a slimming magazine, there’s also a distinct lack of information to help people lose weight. There’s no diet plan in the main magazine. However, the free cover-mounted book with this issue includes a somewhat complicated eating plan and toning exercises.

Unfortunately, there’s not much going for this magazine. There’s no structure or consistent style throughout the magazine, the design leaves a lot to be desired and it’s hard to tell the adverts from the editorial pieces.

Who it will suit

Anyone who is a product junkie.

Value for money

• Slimming – this contains little new or useful information to help slimmers lose those pounds and even the diet looks like hard work 1/10
• Content –all in all, it’s a badly put together package 0/10

Note: Slimmer Magazine used to be called "Slimmer Healthier Fitter"