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The Fitness Industry’s Dirty Little Secret
The Fitness Industry Has Secrets ...
Many of us are familiar with Photoshopping images of models in our favorite magazines. But do you know the fitness industry does a similar trick when it comes to fitness stars?
As a freelance writer for PilatesStyle magazine, I spoke with a few of the stars out there. I’ve also picked up whispers about it at industry conferences and seen it in print a couple of times about what fitness stars do to look good for their shoots. The simple answer? They diet down in a similar fashion to body builders getting ready for a competition.
Most of the fitness experts you see don’t really look like that most of the time. Quite a few stars will diet down a dress size or two for the brief amount of time that they actually shoot the shows. Film crews are expensive to put together, so the production company will block off a week or so, get their star lined up and do 1/2 season or a full season worth of shows. For DVD production, they will line up different people as “talent” and shoot several different videos with the same film crew.
So the next time you’re watching the infomercial on TV and wondering why you can’t look like that ~ take heart! The fitness stars we’re aspiring to be want to look like that too!
Would love comments on this one! Thanks,
My article for PilatesStyle about producing a fitness video is here. Go down about 2/3rds of the way.
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This is a great post. It’s one of those things that you assume, but don’t really believe until someone with credibility says it. And until then, you continuously set goals that are unrealistic. I have been trying to use a picture of myself, when I felt that I was at my peak. Not a 21yr old, prebaby pic.. just a picture that I had taken during the time of full fitness and health concentration.. I remembered how great I felt.. that’s the biggest motivation!
I look like my photo all the time, except at the end of summer vacation when a couple weeks of drunken gluttony adds a few pounds, which I quickly lose.
The only photoshopping on my pics is for my eye bags and removing certain “below the waist” bulges from wearing spandex that no one wants to see.
By the way, I thought Jason Statham looked awesomely ripped in Death Race, then I saw this: http://thesuperficial.com/2009/03/bfm_enlarged/enlarged-jason_statham_uses_martial_art.php?bfm_index=2&bfm_page=0
He doesn’t look bad, but he sure isn’t as ripped as he was in that movie.
I’ve heard Tom Cruise really struggles to drop weight for movies too.
I wonder if Brad Pitt is always ripped?
James
I won’t say any names but I know of a couple high profile fitness brothers, one of whom had liposuction before a shoot. It’s insane what some people do!
Think it is sad that our culture lives with faith that we are supposed to even look like those clowns, they aren’t healthy nor are they fit. What kind of idol is someone who is fake? Takes a lot of dedication, if not a whole lifestyle change to be truly fit and healthy, it is a 24/7 job that is totally worth the investment, heck it your life… your body… your health. Wake up people, those clowns on TV don’t know nor care. Whew…. off stepping off my soap box.
Yes – it’s too bad more people aren’t aware of this, particularly the young and impressionable. I battled an eating disorder in University trying to be like what I was reading in the fitness magazines. Here I was, in University learning how to recognize the signs & symptoms of an eating disorder in the athletes I was treating as an Athletic Therapist, while I was battling the same thing. All that did was teach me how to hide it better. I love Shape magazine for it’s use of Reader Models, and the Dove campaign to love your body. Those are great examples of how the media could help impressionable readers.
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