- What's up? It's your girl, FrumpyFit.
If you don't know who I am, I'm an online weight loss coach
who's dedicated to calling out all the BS
in the fitness industry, and providing you
with accurate fitness, nutrition, and weight loss information.
Today we're talkin' about the shockingly wild and dramatic
world of transformation photos.
I can guarantee, if you're watch-
I mean, obviously you're watchin' this right now,
but it's gonna be much more shocking and crazy
than you think it's gonna be, okay?
So strap in, let's get ready to go.
Actually, while you're mentally preparing yourself
for all the wildness we're about to talk about,
I wanted to let you know this video's sponsored by "Magic Spoon."
And I told you guys in the last video
I was gonna get my hands on cinnamon.
Here it is and I wanna do a live taste test with you guys.
So, let's do that.
(music)
So in the first video I said my favorite flavor was fruity,
in the second video I said my favorite flavor was frosted,
so we're gonna see if cinnamon can beat that.
Okay, I feel like frosted is still my number one, but this is so close.
Cinnamon is so close to being my number one.
It's just as sweet as Cinnamon Toast Crunch,
which is crazy 'cause there's no sugar in it.
Has a really nice strong cinnamon flavor,
more than your typical store bought Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
We also, in our latest variety pack,
got our hands on peanut butter which is another new flavor.
I'm not a huge peanut butter fan, but my boyfriend is
so here's his text review of the peanut butter flavor.
So our go-to variety pack is peanut butter,
cinnamon now, frosted and fruity.
So if you guys wanna try a variety pack,
you can use this code, or use the link below
and get $5 off your variety packs.
So thank you Magic Spoon for sponsoring this video.
So there are two primary reasons why I think
that you should not trust transformation photos
and why, at the very least, you should be just at least cautious,
when you're looking at them, especially if you're using it
to evaluate whether or not you wanna purchase a supplement,
a product, a program, or anything like that.
And so the first one is that they can be very easily manipulated
which I'm gonna demonstrate in this video
with multiple examples so you can see what I'm talking about.
And the second reason is that
it just is really capturing two moments in time
and you don't really know what the context is
of what's going on there.
Even if somebody explains how they did that,
there's a lot that I want you to consider
that can't be shown and is likely not being talked about
when people are posting transformation photos.
Okay, so like I said, transformation photos
can be very, very manipulated.
And how do we manipulate a transformation photo?
So lighting, angles, posing, flexing, clothing.
Did I already say lighting?
And even like how tan you are can all make
a very, very dramatic difference in a transformation photo.
So let me use myself as an example.
I posted this on Instagram.
Which if you look, I tried to make it a very,
it's obviously very dramatic, right?
But this is to show the point.
So in the before, you can see that I look miserable
which is characteristic for a before photo a lot of times.
The lighting is different, my clothing is different, the pose is different,
I'm not flexing, there's a lot that's different
between the two photos and I did that on purpose.
Now not every single transformation is gonna be,
I feel like as obviously manipulated as this one,
but you can see in the after photo,
I am posing, I went closer to my light source,
I turned to the side because I wanted to accentuate my 11 lines on my abs,
which side lighting does very nicely.
I'm wearing high waisted leggings instead of pulling my shorts down
like low waisted style, I'm smiling, all of these things
are greatly impacting the way that this transformation looks.
And this was taken a minute apart from each other,
as long as it took me to change clothes, honestly.
And what was extra funny about posting this on Instagram
is I got tagged in a story immediately after posting this
'cause I tagged it like, "Transformation photo,"
all the relevant hashtags of a transformation photo, and I got this tag.
Basically this person telling me I should submit my transformation
to a transformation page because I would likely get
lots of followers from my amazing transformation.
And so it would have been so easy for me to post this
and say, "Oh, this took six months!"
Or you know, a five week challenge,
and this is the supplement I took and blah, blah, blah.
It's very, very easy and so I see this a lot, a lot.
So I just wanted to teach you all those factors
that influence a transformation photo
so you can kinda see it happening and maybe you can
notice those things when you're looking at other peoples transformation.
I wanna use another example of myself
but compared to somebody else,
it was a TikTok that I saw of this girl posting an ab workout
for quarantine and it got so many views.
I can't remember how many views this video got.
And so I wanted to show how easy it was
to get the transformation that she showed in the beginning
of her ab workout transformation with me not doing anything whatsoever.
It's another two second transformation change.
So I'll put that here. I put it in slowmo so you can see,
she's doing all the characteristic stuff,
her lighting had changed, her pose changed, her flexing changed,
her, I don't know if I said clothing, here I am all over the place today.
So you can see that I achieved a very similar transformation
to what she showed in the video within seconds.
I had to slow it down in this video
because it was so fast.
And so I'm not saying that her ab program didn't work,
I'm not saying that she didn't have a transformation,
all I'm saying with the comparison here
is that the transformation she showed at the beginning
was misleading because it wasn't an accurate comparison.
So if you really wanted to compare photos side by side,
I can throw some of mine in here.
It's the same clothing, the same lighting, the same time of day,
the same posing, literally you need to make sure every single constant
of that transformation, like the before and after pics, are as similar as possible
'cause I have my clients send me progress photos
every week when they check in with me.
And so these are the things I ask of them
so I can actually tell whether or not they're transforming
or if it's just a matter of some sort of variable
like lighting or posing or clothing.
Okay, now let's get into the drama, okay?
So this is Mik Zazon?
I can't remember how to pronounce her last name.
So she's into body positivity and showing what normal bodies look like.
And she used to be super into fitness,
I believe she had a history with disordered eating,
and so somebody, this Instagram page, stole her photos
and took a photo of her before and after,
and so actually what she talked about on her story,
'cause this is a screen shot of her story,
the photo on the left, which is supposed to be her after,
was actually before, when she was struggling with disordered eating.
And the photo that they used in this post as the before is really her after
when she had healed her relationship with food.
And so she was very upset that they used these photos,
and so stealing transformation photos for sketchy supplement
and marketing scams is very, very common.
I screenshotted this, but there are so many other examples
of this happening on social media which is why you have to be
so skeptical when you see stuff like this.
And so another great example, I don't know,
probably some of you have heard of this
but I know there are still some people out there
who haven't heard of Sarahs Discovery,
but this is another prime example of stealing transformation,
stealing transformation photos in order to sell a product or service,
and so this was very, very prevalent on Instagram,
maybe also on Twitter, I literally can't function on Twitter
I don't know how it works so I only know about it on Instagram.
So there are hundreds of Instagram pages all titled something,
like with a handle very similar like Sarah's Discovery 1, Sarah's Discovery 2,
It's just all over the place.
I'm sure that they're buying followers to make them look credible,
they're stealing people's transformation photos
in order to sell a product.
So every single Instagram page will have a link to an article,
and it doesn't have it now, we'll pull up the article,
but it doesn't have it right now.
In the past when I had looked at this article,
there was literally a disclaimer at the bottom that had said like,
"This isn't really an article, it's a sales page."
And so their sales page was posing as an article.
And so, let's just actually, I'm gonna scoot over so we can look at this together.
So essentially the story is that Sarah is some student from Stanford
who used all her budget for her masters program,
and at the very last second she discovered this amazing
combination of ingredients that melts fat!
And now she's sharing with you!
It's like this whole, so Sarah doesn't exist.
She's not really a human being, she's fake.
They just pull all of these peoples transformation photos.
And so if you look kind of at the very first part of this page
you can see, "Exclusive:"
And if you notice the date is,
if you go on this post tomorrow, or whatever day you're watching this,
the date will say whatever date you're looking at it,
so it looks like it's like breaking news,
but they just update it every single day.
And so we're scrolling and it's lots of transformation photos,
I can gaurantee none of these people tried this product.
And what's extra funny, I love this,
the likes were definitely fabricated, like Photoshopped,
so they have liked by Kylie and 4,345,173 others.
Mm? I don't think so.
So then if you scroll all the way through the page
it's just the whole story that I told you about them blah blah,
like running out of money and finding this super cheap ingredient mixture
that melts fat and her wanting to pay it forward and save the world,
and it's very dramatic, and of course they're selling this supplement now
which is sort of like keto whatever supplement.
And then when you get to the very, very bottom
it says that you get a free bottle for a limited time,
there's only six bottles available
and I can gaurantee there's gonna be six free bottles available tomorrow.
And I'm sure it's like you have to put in your credit card information,
it's just super sketchy, total scam, avoid at all costs.
But this is the most well known, for me, example
of this whole transformation photo sketchy AF kind of situation.
And if you do enough research you can find articles of people talking about
how their transformation photos were stolen for something like this,
whether's it's Sarah's Discovery or something else.
And so a lot of these people in these photos
that are being used for this scam of a supplement
spent years on their transformation
only to have their transformation stolen and used to pedal BS.
This concludes kind of the examples of how easy it is
to manipulate transformation photos,
whether the photo themselves are being manipulated,
and not to mention Photoshop and FaceTune,
let's not even go there for the sake of this video.
So perfect example of being able to very easily manipulate the photos themselves
and use the photos of maybe somebody else for something really sketchy
in order to sell a product, okay?
Now we're gonna jump in to the other half of the equation
which I think is just as important,
and that even if the transformation is legitimate,
even if the person really did get the transformation the way that they're saying,
and they're trying to be honest and up front about it,
there's still a whole other side to the equation
which is, you don't truly know every single thing that happened
in order to get that transformation.
You also don't know what happened after that transformation.
So if the transformation happened in the past,
maybe that person gained a lot of the weight back.
I see this a lot with people who try certain fad diets.
They get these amazing results,
but then they end up gaining the weight back.
So many people who lose weight do it in an unsustainable way
and then end up losing all of their results.
And so you should never decide to do something
just because somebody got results.
You shouldn't decide to do something even if you got results.
If the end, the super end long term result was that you lost those results.
I feel like I just said results way too many times.
So especially if it's somebody who doesn't have a background
in fitness and nutrition education or knowledge,
then they might be saying, "Oh, I lost weight
by doing X thing," but they don't really understand
that at the end of the day it was a different factor
that they just weren't aware of that caused the weight loss.
I've talked about this before, but I hope this is making sense.
Essentially what I'm saying I guess, is that the fact that somebody else
got a transformation really doesn't matter,
and shouldn't impact your decision of purchasing a supplement
or a program or hiring a coach or anything like that.
You need to really take the time to educate yourself
about what it's gonna take to acheive those results,
analyze whether the thing that this transformation photo
is selling or whatever, is going to accomplish that,
and then, the next step, is to figure out if it makes sense for you.
I've said this so many times,
but a calorie deficit is how you lose weight,
and there's so many ways to accomplish this,
I'll like my calorie deficit playlist
where it's all my videos talking about it
so you can get a better idea of how to choose the right thing for you.
So even if it is backed by science, even if it does get a lot of people
the results they're looking for, and it makes sense,
you need to take a second and be like,
"Okay, does this make sense for me?"
And so a perfect example of this
is transformation challenges on social media
that a lot of fitness influencers will make.
So like, Chloe Ting, she does a lot of videos talking about peoples transformations.
Paige Hathaway has another one, she has a five week challenge
and gives away money to the best transformation.
And so again, just like the TikTok girl that we mentioned before,
it doesn't mean that that program doesn't work,
it doesn't mean that that program is bad,
it's just that you need to evaluate
whether or not the transformation photos
are really showing you a true transformation.
Like I said, all the variables should be as consistent as possible
and then it's the second part about analyzing that,
"Okay, does this make sense in terms of the science behind these things?
Did this person genuinely get the result that they're presenting
in these transformation photos, and does it make sense for me?"
Because a lot of times what happens,
and I've already said this, I know,
but a lot of times the person who gets that crazy result
doesn't maintiain that result.
And so if you're not gonna maintain the result, what's the point, right?
If you've been here a while, if you've seen my content you know,
long term sustainable results is the only thing that matters to me,
and I think it is probably, it should be the only thing that matters to you too.
And I didn't even plan to talk about this, but it just popped in my head.
While we're on the subject and I'm ranting about it,
these transformations, these extreme transformations,
whether they're manipulated or they're not manupulated,
whether they're done by something unsustainable or not,
these extreme transformations that people like
on social media so much just reinforce this idea of,
everybody should be able to get results very quickly
and that's absolutely not the case.
So don't let all these transformation photos you see on social media
fool you into thinking that this is healthy and normal,
because it's, in most cases, not.
And not to mention that there are so many other indicators of progress
that have nothing to do with the way that you look.
How do you feel? How do you feel in your clothes?
Do you feel healthier? Do you have more energy?
Are you getting better sleep?
There's so many other, are you happier?
Are you able to enjoy food without being stressed about it?
There are so many non-scale or non-aesthetic victories
that deserve to be celebrated even more,
in my opinion, than a transformation photo.
It's just hard to show those things in a photo
or in a space like social media
where everything is so visual.
So that's the conclusion of the wild crazy rollercoaster ride
of transformation photos that I wanted to take you on.
Let me know what you were most surprised about in the comments below.
Don't forget to like and subscribe here.
You can also follow me on TikTok and on Instagram,
and I will see you guys in the next video.
Bye!