Did anyone see this on Huffington Post? On two separate occasions, a guy created a before & after shot on the same day, with what looks like incredible weight loss results. But instead, it was all due to shaving, better lighting, sucking in his stomach, photo editing, etc.

Here's the article. What do you think?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew...ef=mostpopular

I've never believed before and after photos...other than "real" ones, such as the ones posted on this forum...but not those used for marketing purposes. Also, what the fellow says in the article makes a lot of sense to me.

I always notice on weight loss ads on TV that the "after" picture the people are always spray tanned it totally makes you look so much thinner to be tan!! Crazy!

It was discovered a few years ago that sometimes people gain weight for the before photos for those types of advertisements. I wouldn't believe any of them.

HAHAHAHA I always knew the marketing before and afters were mostly full of s**t but dang! that cracks me up

I too am a skeptic by nature and find most advertising (not just weight loss or body transformation ads) to be little more than a bunch of bull squirt, but I have to admit that it was impressive how a few tweaks made his body look drastically different!

Also, ab definition or no, that guy is easy on the eyes

Thanks for posting this NewLeaf.

Wow! Crazy that those were taken on the same day.

Absolutely true!

This is a photo taken of a woman () after barely 3 months of a nutrition/training program. AMAZING!!!!

What's the secret??
(In that first picture with the pink top, I gave birth the night before!!! )

It's such a scam.

Funny enough, I saw one of these weight loss programs/ads in my spam box and it was run by a girl I went to high school with!!!! She was a lifelong athlete and got a bit plump in college. So, she showed all her drinking/bloated photos and then amazing photos (after!) of her being an incredible athlete, all for a low price of $59.99 or whatever.... yep, sorry, not entirely accurate.

Haha Sacha! So true. It's amazingly easy to manipulate, I disbelieve advertising as a rule.

What a cute post-baby-belly, and you look awesome 3 months later!!

The part of the article with the pictures is pretty funny and yea, of course you can do that with a little tweaking and editing. BUT I don't agree with much that the guy wrote. Sure, there are a TON of adverts that utilize either fake pictures, but those are mostly for diet pills. I don't believe that it's impossible to achieve the advertised results with a training program. Also, the article is mainly referring to Insanity and P90X where most of the peoples before/after pictures that have lost 50-100 lbs have repeated the 90 days programs multiple times, as it is also stated on the sites.
Of course, don't guide yourself by pictures, results may vary :P But I don't think that they're all fake either.. it's kind of an insult to the people who worked so hard to achieve their goals.
Sustained fitness, exercising and healthy eating are the recipe for a healthy life.
That being said, no matter how good their programs are, I would never pay for them and I think that you can totally get all the cardio and training you need for free, by different outdoor activities or common-sense things you can do without paying hundreds of $ for some videos (I have this mentality because the economy in my country is ages away from the prices in USA - plus you can find most of the stuff on-line for free, there's no big piratry issues over here). Some of those videos cost as much as a minimum wage salary over here.
The line that really ticked me was this: "Being tricked into eating low-calorie diets and doing endless cardio is a recipe for fat gain, especially in the long term." - Yes, if you don't learn anything from it and right after you finish all the hard work, you go back to the habits that got you there. But keeping what you eat in check and trying to throw in some exercising for the rest of your life, will definitely not get you fat.

Also, at the end of the article there's a slideshow of over 400 before/after pictures. They don't look fake to me and they're pretty damn amazing changes.

Every time a commercial for some weight loss supplement came on TV, I always told my husband that it looks like the model is sucking his or her gut waaaay in, because of how slouched their back always looks. I guess this is proof!