"Don't Be a Slave to Bodybuilding -- Enjoy It" counsels Arnold Schwarzenegger in a headline above his editorial in the current issue of Muscle & Fitness magazine.
Next to a page advertising a grape-flavored protein drink, the governor takes on the role of executive editor, lamenting that some bodybuilders "with somber expressions" have turned the sport into drudgery.
"They carry gallon-size plastic jugs of water, as if their bodies will need that amount during the next few minutes. They have to eat nothing but chicken and rice, even though the next contest is months away. Does any of that seem joyful? Not to me."
Schwarzenegger may have taken a leave of absence from movie acting to be governor, but he's still preaching the workout gospel as executive editor of Muscle & Fitness and Flex magazines, the bodybuilding buffs' bibles put out by American Media, which employs him for at least $1 million a year.
Each month the magazines feature an editorial by Schwarzenegger -- although, as Vincent Scalisi, editor in chief of Muscle & Fitness, has told the Los Angeles Times, Schwarzenegger doesn't write them. He sort of dictates them: The governor chats by phone with editors who take notes, write drafts, and then send them off for him to approve, according to Scalisi.
The editorial that appears in Muscle & Fitness one month is almost identical to the editorial in the issue of Flex dated one month earlier.
The governor's most controversial editorial was his impassioned defense of dietary supplements -- ads for which carpet Muscle & Fitness.
"All too often, dietary supplements have been lumped into the same category as harmful anabolic steroids," writes Schwarzenegger in his June editorial in Muscle & Fitness (and the May 2005 Flex). He adds that he supports bans on steroids but makes it clear that "to ban dietary supplements such as protein powders, multivitamins, glutamine, etc., is misguided and wrong," and points out that he vetoed a recent state bill restricting performance-enhancing dietary supplements. "To show true concern, why don't we pass a law that takes junk food out of schools?" he writes.
Schwarzenegger also said the magazines that employ him should show people the difference between dietary supplements and illegal steroids "and ultimately protect the kind of right America's forefathers wrote into our Constitution: the freedom of choice."
