Apologies for not blogging much over the last week.

As you may know I was holiday with my family.

I actually tried a few times to email you guys (because I enjoy doing it) – bu the internet connection was the slowest I have ever encountered.

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Anyhow, those of you on the Facebook page (check it out here if you’re not already on it) may have noticed that the other week I asked it anyone was interested in seeing some of the ‘tricks of the trade’ of how magazines fool us with their ‘before and after photos’.

There was a good response, so I thought I’d have a go at seeing how much change I could make it one hour.

Here’s the result:

1 hour body transformation

These two photos were taken 54 minutes apart a week last Saturday.

I took a number of steps to make the before look as bad as possible and the after to look a good as I could.

The tricks I used were:
  • Hair – I hadn’t shaved for a week in the photo on the left. A quick face and chest shave makes a big difference. I also hadn’t done anything with my ‘bed hair’ for the before and styled in for the after.
  • Posture – Slouching and sticking my stomach out on the left, pulling it in an contracting everything on the right
  • Pump – I did a few minutes of press ups and pull ups for the after – getting a bit more blood in the muscles to give them a fuller look
  • Clothes – Baggy trousers to tight shorts
  • Lighting – daylight on the left, overhead light turned on on the right
  • Face – Glum on the left, happy (er) on the right
These are just a few of the techniques used for before and afters.
  • Professional lighting makes an even bigger difference
  • Make up on the body to create or accentuate lines and contours
  • Post shoot editing – ‘Photo shopping’
So, as you can see,before and afters aren’t always what they appear.
It’s one of the reasons we accompany ours with ‘stats’ about body fat loss (not just weight).
And we use ‘normal’ pictures showing people in their usual life for many of them.
And we accompany them with the real stories from the real people we work with.
When I mentioned in the ‘Body By Vi’ article the other week that I was aware that at least some of the photos used weren’t genuine before and afters gained over the specified time frame from using that product, quite a few of your replied expressing amazement that this practice was allowed.
I’ll be honest – our industry has very poor regulation.
A lot of what you see is, at the very least, an exaggerated version of the truth.
But, hopefully now we’ve clued you up, you can spot some of these tricks and it’ll help you make your own mind up.
Much love,
Jon “Little bit disappointed with my after photo” Hall
Jon Hall
Jon Hall

When not helping people to transform their lives and bodies, Jon can usually be found either playing with his kids or taxi-ing them around. If you'd like to find out more about what we do at RISE then enter your details in the box to the right or bottom of this page or at myrise.co.uk - this is the same way every single one of the hundreds who've described this as "one of the best decisions I've ever made" took their first step.