Fake before and after pictures, and real ones.

I love you guys that post your before and after pictures. I know and believe they are real because we are all on this journey together, and we WATCH each other's progress, but in the advertising world of weight loss, do NOT believe everything you see.

PLEASE read my story:
One of my continuing education classes for personal training included a speaker about weight loss products. The speaker did not name the product, but he told a true story that shocked us all. So read this carefully.
Because as shocking as it is, I believe the speaker.

The speaker had a very fit, good looking friend, a young man who had always kept himself in fantastic shape, had always watched what he ate, and had the body any guy would love to have. This weight loss product company approached him. They offered him tons of money to get fat. You see, they took pictures of him while he was buff and gorgeous. Then he ate crap for weeks, and gained a lot of weight. He felt like crap too, but they had offered him a LOT of money. Then they took pictures of him, when he was fat. Guess which picture they used for the "before" picture??? Guess which picture they used for the "after"? Yep, they swapped them. They used his true fit gorgeous before picture for the AFTER one. They used the picture they took of him after he got fat and posted it as his BEFORE picture.

Are you gasping now? Are you furious? How do they get away with it? Simple. They post disclaimers like, "results not typical" etc. You should have heard the gasps by all of us personal trainers in the room. We would have never thought a company could do this. Is it possible this speaker lied to us? I suppose, but why would he? This is a reputable, repsected, national education organization.

Advertising has been lying to us for years. Nothings going to change, still baffles me how people still buy into and then are shocked when they don't get the promised results.