What if I was to tell you that some of the biggest names that you follow and look up to on social media in the fitness and bodybuilding industry are the biggest frauds? The definition of fraud is the intentional deception of a person or entity by another made for monetary or personal gain.
Fake nattys, AKA Fake Natural Fitness Personalities – a person who presents themselves as being natural and makes public claims that they do not take Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs), or some illegal muscle building enhancement to aide their physique, when that is absolutely not true.
How disappointed would you be if somebody claimed they were natural and that they built their body by eating the right way using basic supplements and exercise, but then you found out later on that they weren’t natural because you either saw gyno on their nipples or they tested positive in a competition or a show, or their FFMI – Fat Free Mass Index – is consistently over 25, or they weigh as much as a top IFBB bodybuilder in their contest shape weight.
And during this time they were claiming to be a natural while selling eBooks, diet plans, training plans, hosting seminars and claiming that if you buy their digital products they can help you get in great shape because of the results they claimed to achieve naturally.
If somebody wants to take steroids or PED’s it doesn’t make them a bad person. What makes them unethical and fraudulent is when they present an image on social media, TV, or any big platform that supports the claim that they have built their physique the conventional and natural way through just diet and exercise in order to make money based on this false brand perception.
A lot of these so called fake nattys are getting exposed on YouTube and being called out by other YouTube personalities. To be honest with you I think it’s great that these fraudsters are getting what’s coming to them. You, the consumer, the fan, need to use reasonable common sense when following someone in the fitness industry so as to determine if they really are who they present themselves to be.
Here are a couple of easy indicators: If a person is bigger or even just as big as Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime 6’2” 240lbs contest shape, he is not natural plain and simple. Arnold is the best example to use from a physical and dimensional sense because he had some of the greatest genetics ever.
If a person has sizable gyno on his nipples that is a side effect of taking PED’s: that person is not natural. If the person’s FFMI is significantly greater than 25 it is more than likely that they aren’t natural. And I would say closer to 29 or 30 or over in terms of FFMI.
One of the reasons why people love Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dorian Yates is they kept it real and were honest. And both said “yes, I took steroids to build my body when I was competing.” People still love these guys because they didn’t lie to us.
Some of these fake natty’s would do more of a service to themselves if they were honest about what they did or even if they just stopped saying they were natural publicly. To promote yourself that way and to make money off of this falsified brand is fraud and you do more damage to your brand than actual good. The public isn’t stupid. They will find out if you’ve been lying to them and you will be publicly shamed and your brand and personal credibility will forever be tarnished.
Fit People or Fit Models Who Aren’t Really Fitness or Diet Experts
If you claim to be a fitness expert but aren’t certified, have never trained anybody, studied, or even read anything that is exercise science related then you are not an expert, plain and simple.
There are many Instagram fit models and even well known male or female fitness personalities and fitness models that have big followings, but have never trained anybody nor have they ever created a diet plan. Yet they sell online diet and exercise plans and make a lot of money through the illusion of being an expert.
Some of them have assistants or someone else that creates their diet and exercise plans which is highly unethical because people are buying programs they believe are designed by experts.
Some of them even have columns in popular fitness magazines and some of them have never even written their own columns as someone else writes it for them. Why would you have a fitness column if you can’t write and don’t have the exercise science related knowledge to string together a simple sentence?
Why would you market yourself as a writer if you have never written anything and why would you accept an opportunity as a columnist when you don’t write your own material? That act is fraud and remember what the definition of fraud is: the intentional deception of a person or entity by another made for monetary or personal gain.
I know of someone who is a fairly well known Internet fitness marketer who helped to create a digital fat loss eBook product for his wife. On the landing page he says that she was featured in all of these popular fitness magazines by name and by their logo. He did this to help increase her credibility as a fitness expert, which she is not, and so when the traffic hits the landing page a visitor can see all these magazines that she’s been featured in. This tactic was used to encourage the sale of more eBooks. The truth is that she wasn’t featured in any of them.
As a consumer you need to be smart and do your research on the people you follow in the fitness industry because, as I have pointed out above, some of them are not credible as you think. Just because someone is in shape and has a big following doesn’t make them an expert.
Many of them have never taken the time to learn and study exercise science or nutrition. They would rather have other people create this silly façade so that they appear to be knowledgeable. Some of them can’t even string a sentence in a simple email to you or even create a philosophical or motivational social media post because somebody else does it for them.
Is it the Steroids/PEDS Or Supplements Building the Body?
One of the worst forms of fraud in the fitness industry is when the bikini competitor, figure competitor, physique competitor, and/ or bodybuilder is taking every illegal PED or steroid to build their body and get as lean as possible to step on a fitness competition stage. After that they are pushing some stack of supplements and posting it on social media and saying how these supplements helped them to build their body for the stage.
Everybody knows that what built their body was the illegal PEDs and steroids. There was a scientific research study compiled not that long ago which proved that you could actually build muscle while sitting on the couch and taking steroids and most importantly never lifting a thing.
The consumer looks up to these physique competitors and will buy everything they say and everything they take supplement wise. A lot of them conveniently forget to tell the truth and reveal the actual PED cycle stack that their coach gives them. The sad part of this is that many of them don’t even know what they are actually taking.
It’s not just guys, its women too. In fact, the women are just as bad as the guys when it comes to this. Many of the thin bikini competitors are taking drugs given to them by their coach to step on stage and then after their competition they’re on social media pushing some silly supplement stack that supposedly did the trick for them.
Back as a senior in high school, I was a victim of this fraud. I remember seeing the old Cybergenic supplement commercials back in the day and there was a popular bodybuilder featured in the commercial saying how he put on 30 pounds of muscle taking Cybergenics. This was a supplement product that was marketed heavily and the claims were you could build lean muscle just by taking the product.
Being a young, impressionable, skinny kid, I watched the commercial thinking that I could put on 30 pounds of muscle because the bodybuilder said so. I was obviously very naive and didn’t understand that Cybergenics wasn’t the product that helped this bodybuilder put on 30 pounds of muscle. It was steroids that did it.
I was a victim of this fraud and there are many teenagers, and even adults too, who still fall prey to this fraud. The only way to stop people from falling victim to these schemes is to educate them.
Photoshop, Liposuction, Booty Implants, Etc.
Isn’t it sad that when some fitness model posts a simple selfie of their physique on social media in order to motivate you to push through fitness goals that you can’t even trust that the image is actually this person’s true physique? In the fitness industry you have some fit models who are so insecure that they can’t post an image of their body on social media without having to first photoshop the image to make their body more desirable to you and to themselves.
If a person is going to use Photoshop to try and make their butt bigger, waist smaller, arms and shoulders bigger, lips fuller and nose smaller so they can post this selfie image on social media in order to make money off their digital products then that is straight up fraud.
Why would want to follow someone that does that and then lies to their followers that this is their physique and that this is the workout they do when that’s not true. Are they really inspirational?
There is a difference between that and what photographers do professionally for magazine publications. Once you sign a release form for a photographer, professionally they have the rights to alter or edit your photo since they are the copyright owner of that image. After you sign the release form you have no control over that.
Some of the biggest female names that you might know in the fitness and bodybuilding industry and that I know personally have done liposuction. They were either much thicker, gained weight when they were younger, or they had a child and had a lot of extra baby weight to lose.
Some of them resorted to liposuction to lose the weight and there is nothing wrong with that if it is your personal choice, but what’s wrong is when they are promoting their “before and after” transformation pictures and are claiming that they lost this weight doing some unique diet and exercise program.
Then they use those same transformations to sell fitness equipment products, apps, eBooks, etc. This is clearly fraud and when’s the last time you ever found a fraud inspirational?
Don’t forget the female fitness model who posts daily Instagram or Facebook shots of her backside to show people how to get a better butt. Then you come to find out that the only reason this person has such a pronounced backside is because of implants she had put in through surgery and had nothing to do with the silly nonsensical glute exercises she posts. How inspirational is that? Then this same person brands herself as a glute expert when she has no credentials, no certifications, no formal education, etc. She is just someone that has lots of social media followers that are really just a bunch of horny guys that love to see her daily posts.
To promote oneself as an expert of a certain body part such as the glutes but getting implants in order to make money off of this falsified brand is fraud.
You, the Fitness and Health enthusiast, really have to do your own independent research and use some common sense when following some of these so called inspirational fitness figures because many of them only care about how much money they can make off of you.
Many of them have lied so much for 5, 10, 20 plus years that they actually believe their own lie and they will go with that lie until they are exposed. And even when they are exposed, they will deny it to the bitter end.
Are there some good quality inspirational people out there in fitness industry? Yes, there are! But many of them are not that flashy, some of them may not have millions of followers, some of them don’t post images of their body every single day and aren’t begging for attention. But they have solid, genuine messages and they are highly ethical and credible experts and personalities. They actually care about the consumer and what they put out to the consumer information wise.
Use common sense and be smart. Do your independent research. Google is a useful resource for that.
