I subscribed and payed for my subscription in July. I didn't receive my first magazine until the last weekend of October. Emails to customer service gets either no response. Their magazines always come almost a month late. Worse service Ever!

kdreamer

USA

This is a great overall magazine for women. Love the tips on skin care, makeup, clothes, recipes, and exercise ideas. This is one of my favorite magazines and I save many articles for future ideas. I would highly recommend this magazine to any woman who wants advice on workouts and fashion. A must read!

kcurry74

Mascoutah, IL

Self has got to be one of my favorite magazines - it is probably the only one I read cover to cover each month and I subscribe to quite a few. I am in my 50's and I would say this magazine is geared more for woemn in their 20's and 30's , but is still great for women of all ages who are fit and active and for whom health and exercise is a priority . There is very little , if any, fluff in the magazine   - there are always good articles on nutrtition, food , recipes and exercises . Many of the articles will motivare you to get moving and to pay better attention to your health . Self is a winner for all generations .

chercat

Springfield, MA

Unless diet and exercise is your full time job, Self Magazine may not be for you. One of my roommates has a subscription to Self so I occasionlly find myself mindlessly flipping the pages.  Last year was the first time I read Self and I remember being initially impressed. The articles were interesting, the advice was sound and the presentation was unique. I wanted to like Self because it had so much potential but after reading a few more issues I realized that every issue is essentially the same as the last. Self is extremely repetitive, the same advice and information is reused all the time.  You don't need to read more than three issues to learn that Self recylces all of its material and merely re-presents it in different packaging. The topics covered rarely stray from the generic ideas of quick weight-loss schemes that every woman has heard at least a hundred times. Article titles and pictures change, disguising the useless information to appear new and innovative. There is no need to pay four dollars for this sort of old advice that your grandmother could have told you. In addition, the recipes and suggested diet regimes provided in each monthly issue do not cater to vegans or vegetarians.  This fact is perplexing because as a consequence the magazine is losing a big market.  Only twice have I found a vegetarian recipe in Self and have yet to find a vegan one. Yet studies by the American Dietetic Association have found that vegan and vegetarian diets can significantly reduce one's risk of contracting heart disease, colon and lung cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes, kidney disease, hypertension and obesity to name a few. (see: www.vegan.org/FAQs/index.html) Yet, Self seems to ignore the fact that vegetarians even exist, let alone read the magazine. Instead, Self recipes and weekly meal plans are inevitably packed with meat, eggs and dairy. If Self were a true women's magazine dedicated to women's health as they claim to be, you would think that they would at least recognize some of the benefits of vegetarianism. It may be that Self believes that vegetarian women are weak and un-athletic.  This belief, however, is entirely untrue.  In fact, many famous athletes eat a vegan diet including Martina Navratilnova and Ruth Heidrich, a three-time Iron man.  (Check out this link for a longer list of successful vegetarian athletes: www.almostvegetarian.blogspot.com/2008/02/famous-vegetarian-athletes.html) As for exercise advice, Self is only helpful if you are willing to spend the hundreds of dollars on equipment that the demonstrate with in the magazine.  While the workouts may produce results, for a broke college student such as myself, these workout regiments may as well be fantasies.  Weights, medicine balls, palates ropes, yoga blocks, you name it, Self advertises any prop that it can get its hands on and rarely provides instructions for a workout you can do solo. In conclusion, I would not recommend Self to any woman with a busy schedule or a tight budget, nor would I recommend Self to any vegan, vegetarian or even health conscious person.  If the magazine didn't land on my coffee table every month I wouldn't miss it at all, it only causes frustration.  The way that this repetitive information is stealthily presented may actually do more harm than good for the reader.  You could say that Self is like broccoli.  Eating it plan is boring and bland yet extremely nutritious and beneficial for your health.  To make broccoli more enticing you might throw it in a stir-fry, lathering in soy sauce and oil; canceling out the vitamins and ultimately leaving you worse off than you were before.  In this manner, Self is the broccoli in its greasy, sodium-packed and nutrient drained form. Reading Self is just going to leave you feeling thirsty and unfulfilled. 

gdoremus

Bronx, NY

I look forward to receiving this magazine each month and looking through the whole magazine at a glance first before becoming completely involved in the individual articles. For the most part a great magazine, just wish there was less focus on continous weight loss and outward appearances. 

kk36

Pompano Beach, FL

I am a SELF subscriber and have been for many years. What I like best about it is the motivation it gives me to live a healthier, happier life. There are many features within the magazine that I find inspiring, especially the stories of readers who have made significant changes to their diet and exercise program and lost significant amounts of weight and become healthier overall. It makes it easier to see how a normal person like me can take control of my life and make changes to my habits to upgrade my quality of life. I also love all the tips they give for exercise and diet. Every month SELF features a trainer who shows step by step what moves you can do to target certain muscle groups or different tips on how to train your body to burn more fat or have more endurance, whatever your work out goals. They also provide excellent food programs that advise you on what to eat every day to maintain proper health and promote weight loss. The celebrity interviews are fun to read and add to the overall enjoyment of the magazine, as well as the fun facts that are peppered in throughout. This is a great magazine for people who are either already fitness buffs or for newbies who are looking for advice and motivation.

kpotter19

Tucson, AZ

SELF Magazine never lets me down. I have been a long-time reader of the magazine, but just recently became a subscriber. SELF features women celebrities that I like to read about; people like Zooey Deschanel, Carrie Underwood, Jessica Alba, Taylor Swift, and Beyonce. I trust this magazine to tell me the truth. SELF gives good health advice, great fitness advice, and fun beauty tips. There are always some ads in the magazine, but not so many that they annoy too much. Sometimes the things featured are pretty pricey, but that's usually when they're giving the details of what the covergirl is wearing. I recommend this magazine to girls ages 17 and up. Women will love this magazine, but it may be over the heads of girls under the age of 17 or so. SELF does have articles on sex and such, so I would hesitate to give it to younger teens. SELF is an amazing publication, and I anxiously await my copy each month!!

choosetolive15

Mount Vernon, TX

Self is a great magazine for people who are into bettering themselves thru exercise and healthy habits. It is full of ads for beauty products and very few fitness products. The articles tend to be about losing weight or shaping up in the shortest amount of time, which is not helpful to someone who has a long journey ahead of them, it makes it hard to believe that you can be slimmer in just 2 weeks by doing the exercises 3x a week. The models in the magazine are always fitness models, you rarely see a real sized woman who doesn't have abs of steel. The magazine does offer some great recipes and some reviews on fitness products. They offer beauty and fashion advice as well as fitness advice which make its fall into a category of giving you ideas to help your physical self, but little to focus on inner characteristics.

dispatchergurl

Davenport, IA

To all those people out there who are looking for a quick - easy read while on the treadmill or on the train, Self Magazine is just that. It has everything from beauty to fitness, nutrition and doesn't just focus entirely on one subject like many other women's magazines. It gives broad, easy - to - read information that doesn't bore after the first 20 pages. The layout is kinda of nice too, it varies in pace, from articles to short blurbs with interesting facts about various subjects. The writing isn't anything special but what do you expect from a magazine? It's just entertaining and a nice/quick read as a distraction. I like Self because unlike other magazines, i find it doesn't repeat the same information over and over again in each issue. You will get the same type of articles as other magazines but you won't find a formula to it (ex: on cover, lose 5 pounds, better sex, perfect abs...) So, if you're looking for a good magazine to distract yourself, Self is a good choice. 

redsoxgirl22

New York, NY

Are you dieting or a big fitness buff?  Do you like magazines that have step by step fitness routines that you can actually lay in the floor and do based on the magazines instructions?  If so, this magazine is for you.  I need diet & exercise tips just as much as the next woman.  However, this magazine with the exception of a few beauty tips here and there (which I must say are great by the way), is strictly a diet & fitness magazine.  I expect this from say Fitness magazine but Self tends to lend itself more to a more overall Health & Beauty genre but pretty much it's just a diet & exercise magazine.  Just a warning incase you wanted something more than step-by-step exercise routines with photos.

boss8760

Strawberry Plains, TN