Real weight loss is hard work. Faking weight loss is as easy as taking a selfie from just the right angle.
Just ask the professional trainers and fitness enthusiasts on Instagram who are snapping hundreds of fake before-and-after photos simply by tweaking posture, lighting, clothing, and camera angle. In the span of a few seconds, they appear to lose weight, gain muscle, or both.
But they're not trying to deceive their followers: There's a powerful point to all this visual trickery.
"A lot of the imagery we see on Instagram is unrealistic and unattainable," model Jess King wrote on Instagram, where she posted her own fake before-and-after photos a few months ago. "We are all guilty of taking a million photos and uploading one that highlights our supposed 'best angles' — myself included. So [this is] just a little reminder to not base your #bodygoals on anything you see online. We will only ever see someone's highlight reel, and not the 50 pics they took to get their best angle."
Check out these 18 "transformation" photos taken just seconds or minutes apart from one another — and remember them next time you're tempted to compare your own body with the perfectly posed ones you see online.
Trainer Anna Victoria has gained lots of fans by sharing photos of her stomach in a relaxed, natural state.
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By the way: She says that lots of women make two big mistakes when they're trying to get in shape.
"Our belly rolls, cellulite, [and] stretch marks are nothing to apologize for, to be ashamed of, or to be obsessed with getting rid of," she captioned this post.
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Here's Victoria's best advice on how to love your body more.
Weight loss expert Jen Widerstrom of "The Biggest Loser" took these two photos just two minutes apart.
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"We all look like this when we sit," she wrote in the caption. "Don't stress about the way your body looks in certain positions."
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