Hollywood is Wrecking our Body Image

Hollywood Frustrates Me                      

We have heard over and over again about how the worlds of Fashion and Hollywood are destroying how we feel about our bodies. This morning I was reminded of it for the 1000th time. I received an email from a nutrition company, that touted Beyoncé's post-baby weight loss to eating 1 Vegan meal each day. I have no problem with people that adopt a vegan lifestyle, but eating 1 vegan meal each day will not result in a 60 pound weight loss.  

My frustration is not from any single thing that we hear a celebrity does to get in shape. Anything can work, when put into a properly structured plan. My problem lies mostly in the fact that the media never reports the ENTIRE program that they are using. It is much sexier to create an image of this super hero celebrity that just naturally looks amazing (Matthew McConaughey is guilty of this). The reality is that they work just as hard to look the way they do, as you do at your real job. If someone is getting paid $20 million dollars to look a certain way for a movie, you better believe that they'll find a way to accomplish it. 2-3 hour workouts and extreme dieting are commonplace.

Recently, there have been quite a few action hero actors that have tried to resurrect their careers. The one that comes to mind first, for me, is Sylvester Stallone. We all remember "Rocky" and "Rambo." It's no secret that a large part of Stallone's success can be attributed to his muscles. When he revived his Rocky and Rambo characters, a lot of people were very impressed at his physique. There's no denying that he looks great for a 66 year old man. There have been quite a few videos posted on Youtube that show his very intense workouts. What none of the videos or magazine articles mention, is that in January of 2011 he pleaded guilty to bringing steroids to Australia. He may work hard, but he uses some extra chemical help to make sure he fits the image. If this were an isolated incident it would be one thing, but the majority of the "beautiful people" in Hollywood have taken something to help them look a certain way.  

The bottom line is, celebrities are paid a lot of money to be beautiful and they work very hard at it. In the real world, you probably don't have time to workout 2-3 hours per day. I know that I work in the fitness industry, at a Personal Training Studio, and I don't have that kind of time. More importantly, you don't NEED to spend that kind of time exercising. You can see amazing results just by cleaning up your nutrition and exercising for about 45 minutes per day. Unfortunately, we don't have the miracle of CGI and Photoshop in real life, so we need to learn to work with our bodies, the way it was intended.

Jared Carter, CSCS, is the owner of Move Forward Fitness personal training. He welcomes all questions about health and fitness. You can reach him through email (jared@moveforwardfitness.com) or by phone, at 727-515-5318.