Like a lot of people today, I have a Facebook account, and I follow several fitness related pages on there as well. Asides from motivational and ad related posts, a lot of these sites like to post before and after pictures of people. Many of these pictures make you question the legitimacy of the photos, but some are undoubtedly legit transformations. With each picture comes the comments, the haters, and the assumption of drug usage.

Now, let’s put picture integrity and the question of drug use aside for the moment. What these people where able to achieve is truly motivating and inspiring. It doesn’t matter if you are 20, 50, or even 100 pounds overweight, you can change the way you look. The people in those pictures didn’t like the way they looked and they decided to do something about it. Like them, all of us look the way we do because of the choices we made, whether it was to have that ice cream with dinner or the salad. If you are disgusted by what you see in the mirror, then do something about!

Do some people result to drug use to achieve these kinds of results? Sure, but that doesn’t mean you can’t achieve similar results without. Regardless if someone used drugs or not, they had to bust their ass to achieve those results. They didn’t get that way by sitting on the couch eating ice cream while the drugs magically transformed their bodies for them. They where in the gym busting their butt and eating the right foods to look the way they do; something very few people are willing to do these days.

Now, I don’t want this post to be about drug use, and I myself am no advocate of it. My point being is that if you are unhappy with the way you look, you only have yourself to blame for it. No one forced you to eat the way you did, and no one held you at gun point and told you not to exercise. They where all your choices. It is also your choice to do something about it and become one of those motivational “before and after” photos.

-Scott