Self Image - The UltimateFatBurner Blog

Tom Venuto launches the “Love Your Body” Challenge in time for Valentine’s!

You’re familiar with Body Transformation challenges right? These are the contests where over the course of 60-90 or so days, individuals do their utmost to adopt an intensive regimen of dieting and exercise in order to dramatically change their bodies. The individuals who have made the most dramatic changes, win. While on the face of it these programs sound like a great idea, for the most part they are intimidating and exclusive...

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“An Aspirational Picture”

As I noted a couple of years back, in my “Photoshop Phun” post: No matter how perfect your diet and workout is, you will never be perfect. Ever. You will never look like the beauties gracing magazine covers and advertisements. Don’t even imagine you can go there. Sad to say, little has changed since then, despite efforts to expose the trickery and educate people. Still, it’s nice to see some pushback…...

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“The Grass is Not Always Greener”

Although this site is focused primarily on weight loss, my priority is to help people achieve a healthy, active weight. From where I sit, nutrition and exercise are lifestyle issues – I couldn’t care less about being fashion-model thin.  IMHO, the relentless promotion of unrealistically skinny (mostly female) bodies is both physically and psychologically harmful. At any rate, I ran across this personal account on another...

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Survey: Many Young Women Would Trade Years of Life to Be Thin

This is sad. Almost one-third of young women would trade at least a year of their lives to have a perfect body, according to a new survey of British undergraduates. The survey found that 16 percent of young women queried said they’d trade a year of life for their ideal body weight and shape. Ten percent were willing to trade two to five years, and 2 percent were willing to trade up to 10 years of life away. One percent said they...

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CHMP on “The Biggest Loser”

I loved this 6-part series on “The Biggest Loser” by Tristin Aaron of the Center for Health Media and Policy Center at Hunter College. She gets right at what irritates me the most about this exploitative bit of “fitness porn.” Over the season, the show sometimes depicts the dieters sympathetically. They have to. It’s essential that viewers invest in the “characters” and the competition between them. But the...

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“Vanity Sizing” Kicks Guys in the Pants

I’ve long been aware of “vanity sizing” of women’s clothes.  For example, I wear the exact same sizes I did in high school… despite the fact that I’m 10 – 15 pounds heavier (sure, it’s muscle, but muscle still adds bulk). As women have gotten bigger, standard women’s clothing sizes have, too. But I didn’t know that men’s clothes were also subject to this.  After...

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