Resources · Expectations
Results not typical: the honest way to read a before-and-after
"Results not typical." For years that line sat under every transformation photo in the fitness industry, in type small enough to deny. In 2009 the Federal Trade Commission changed its endorsement guides so that a fine-print disclaimer no longer got you off the hook: if you show an unusual result, you have to say what a typical one looks like.1 Most of the industry responded by making the photos bigger.
What the photo shows
One person, on their best day, in their best light, at the end. Usually the person who responded fastest, out of everyone who started. Sometimes the person who was paid.
What it leaves out
Everyone else. The people who got a slower, quieter result and kept it. The people who got the fast result and lost it by the next photo. And the part nobody photographs: what happened in the eighteen months after.
A slow result you keep beats a fast one you rent.
How to read one
Ask what the typical result was, not the featured one. Ask how long ago the "after" was taken and whether it held. Ask whether the program built anything you could keep, like strength, or only removed something, like weight. And ask whether the person in the photo had a life like yours: a job, a knee, a family, a Tuesday.
My own photos
I have before-and-afters from the studio's Bonza Bodies years. They're real, the people consented, and they are the good outcomes, not the average ones. So they come with the line I'd want under anyone else's: results vary from person to person. What the average client here gets is slower, less photogenic, and still theirs five years later. That's the product.
The honest frame
Expect the first month to feel like nothing. Expect month three to feel like something. Expect the photo to happen, if it happens, around the time you've stopped caring about it. That's not a sales pitch. It's the timeline I watch play out, one client at a time, in a basement on Glenarm Place.
Bottom line: the box never worked. The person who did the work every Tuesday did.
Why the scale lies → · Why weight loss stalls → · Training on a GLP-1 →
1. Federal Trade Commission, Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, 16 CFR Part 255, revised 2009.
The typical result starts with thirty minutes.
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